Front Page

In the back country south of Warsaw, there
stood a small shtetl, a little Jewish village,
named Chelm. Renowned across the Pale, the
villagers of Chelm were famous for their sharp
wits, their inventive brains, and their capacity
for resolving difficult problems.

It thus follows that Jewish law does differ in theory and to some important degree in practice from the Catholic and Evangelical approaches to the question...

It's Saturday evening at the Broadwood Hotel and well over a thousand Philadelphians have flocked to the grand ballroom.

Shame wells up in me as I thread my way through the cluster of young wives standing near my home, animatedly talking with one another as their children play at their feet. Four shopping bags dangle from one arm, five from another, and I shift them uncomfortably as I carry them from my car, practically bent over from their weight.

Just last week we experienced the crowning point of the month of Adar by commemorating the extraordinary events that unfolded in the ancient Persian Empire. We read the scroll of Esther, enjoyed a hearty feast, and traded gifts of goodies with each other.

Under what circumstances would it go before the full nine-justice panel – and would that help or hurt your chances?

In recent years an important mitzvah has been largely forgotten by Klal Yisrael. Actually, it is not just a mitzvah that has been lost but an entire Torah value that impacts the very way we understand our world.

We now are in the season of advocacy of preschool, referring specifically to the education of children who are four years old.

It is late at night. There are four of us on the hospital ward. Two are young men, a religious Ethiopian Jew and a young Arab computer "techie" who spends his days working on his laptop. I am one of the two elders in the room. The other is an Arab from a village in the Galilee. The two younger men complain about the horrific snoring coming from us geezers, but they're not sure who is the worst offender. The nurses offer them sympathy and sleeping pills, to no avail.

World War II and the Holocaust dampened Harvard’s enthusiasm for Nazism, and after the war, meritocracy was restored and Jewish enrollment began rising again.

The phone call came at 6 a.m. Steve's wife Julie was on the phone, speaking very calmly and slowly. "There has been a bombing on the bus that Steve was on. He is alive but hurt. Here is Barbara the social worker who will explain."

The war of aggression waged by Hamas, against which Israel has commenced a robust response, must not be seen in a vacuum.

Simply put, Orthodoxy is unwilling to implicitly or explicitly renounce its most basic claim - the uniqueness of its truth, and its central focus that Jewish law is binding.

Our current feature consists of two parts: (1) Israel and Jewish politics and (2) Jewish organizations.

There is no sound so delightful as the whimpering of leftists in the morning.

There is no message so hope-inspiring as the screams of outrage from the world and the
accusations that Israelis have voted against "peace."

Sometimes it's hard to tell which is worse - the vast and growing number of frum singles, or the equally vast and growing number of newspaper articles trying to address the problem. Seriously, though, it's not even close; our unusual system of shidduch dating inflicts significant damage on some members of our community. That's why I'm taking the risk of adding this piece to the glut of shidduch-dating articles already on the market.

A central concept in any discussion about happiness is achieving clarity. “Ain simcha ela k’hataras hasefeikos” – there is no joy as that experienced with the removal of doubt.

Most of the remarkable women of The Greatest Generation were college graduates when very few American women held college degrees.

Whether the victim of our deeds is another person or Hashem (or both), we need to be able to express our regret clearly and without condition.

Tu B’Shevat is not just “another day.” It’s the Rosh Hashanah for trees, one of four roshei hashanah that occur in the Jewish calendar year (Mishnah Rosh Hashanah 1:1).

For 15 years, Egyptian-Jewish businessman Refael Bigio has been battling a goliath corporate adversary, the Coca-Cola Company. Bigio charges that Coke has been profiting from his family’s stolen property just outside Cairo.

“Fulfill my requests for good, grant my request, be mindful of us for deliverance and compassion...remember us for a good, long life…give us bread to eat, clothes to wear...”

A pattern of private remarks about Jews made by Roosevelt may explain why 190,000 immigration spots were left unfilled despite the plight of European Jury.

With the history of twentieth-century science and technology largely a saga of Jewish accomplishment, in retrospect it might seem foreordained that after World War II the rising Jewish nation in the Middle East would emerge not only as a financial power but also as a scientific and technological leader.

Murderous violence has been with us since the generation after Adam and Eve first trudged, ashamed and burdened, east of Eden, banished from the Garden because of their disobedience. Few things through the ages have defined us so much as our ability to visit horrific cruelty upon our fellows.

Ralph Peters is a jack of many trades and master of them all. He is a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, a writer of both fiction and non-fiction (his newest novel, “Hell or Richmond,” set during the Civil War, has just been released) and a military analyst. A columnist for the New York Post since 2002, Peters has written for USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and numerous other publications. He also serves as a Fox News strategic analyst. The Jewish Press spoke with Peters on a variety of issues.

Earlier this month the London Games were all the rage. Tens of thousands descended upon Great Britain’s crown jewel to witness the Olympics and cheer for their respective countrymen.

The twelve-member bipartisan congressional “super committee” on spending cuts formally conceded defeat late last month, after failing to reach common ground on the issues of tax increases and spending cuts.

Those of you who feel the way I do will immediately relate to this: I hate having to listen to pedantic women discuss their Pesach cleaning before Tu B’Shevat is even a blip on the horizon.

Our M.I.T. guru also has assisted anti-Semitic organizations in another quieter way by allowing them to publish or disseminate his books articles and recordings.