Keeping Our Eyes Open
Why are our concerns during the rest of the year limited to ourselves and our close family, to our own narrow social group and to our immediate geographical environment?
Israeli Left’s Amazing Security-Wall Turnabout
Growing up, I always found one of the most bizarre things in history to be the dramaticturnabout of the communist movement the day Germany invaded Stalinist Russia.
Basketball’s Jewish Dynasty
It's Saturday evening at the Broadwood Hotel and well over a thousand Philadelphians have flocked to the grand ballroom.
The Secret Of The Fifteenth Day
In fact, all the Yomim Tovim that fall on the fifteenth of the month represent instances of t’chias hamaisim.
A Titanic Jewish Love Story
At a time when many Jews changed their names and joined churches to deflect anti-Semitism and to facilitate assimilation into American society, Isidor did not deny his heritage; indeed, he embraced it.
FDR’s Jewish Problem – And Its Japanese Link
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.
New York Jewish Women Of The Greatest Generation
Most of the remarkable women of The Greatest Generation were college graduates when very few American women held college degrees.
‘Peril For Israel Wherever It Looked’ By Abba Eban
In short, there was peril for Israel wherever it looked. Its manpower had been hastily mobilized. Its economy and commerce were beating with feeble pulses. Its streets were dark and empty. There was an apocalyptic air of approaching peril. And Israel faced this danger alone.
The Second American Civil War
The Left believes that marriage should be redefined and that judges alone are entitled to do so.
Lethal Alliance: Genocide-Promoting Arabs and Their European Fans
Many are puzzled by the widespread support in European democracies of Palestinian groups and Arab states that promote genocidal anti-Semitism. After all, Palestinian and broader Arab anti-Semitism draws heavily, in its anti-Jewish propaganda, on Nazi models, and Western Europe and the European Union are supposed to be opposed to everything touching on Nazism and its genocidal policies.
Seeing Red: Thoughts On The Bibas Boys
They have recruited so-called rabbis and as-a-Jews who protest genocide in Gaza, whether in newspaper ads or public gatherings, but have precious little to say about hostages and the treatment of their own people.
Symposium: Palestinian Shame, Jewish Guilt
In its turn, the Palestinian street sees in Hamas, the "liberators" of Gaza, the agents of final victory over Israel and votes them into power.
The Vanishing Jewish Baseball Player
Whatever happened to Jewish baseball players? Not that they're an extinct species - several Jews are currently playing in the major leagues or working their way through the minors - but Jewish baseball fans will tell you the present-day crop is relatively unaccomplished and unknown.
Is Aliyah All Or Nothing?
If it is so hard to leave each time we come, why not stay, why not finally move? That question plagues me regularly and nobody asks it more forcefully than I do to myself.
Children and the Essence of Pesach
The humble-natured sheep symbolic of Nissan (Aries), the first month of the year, recognizes the shepherd to be its guide, just as the Jewish people place their faith in their Shepherd, the Creator of the universe.
Rabbi Schepschel Schaffer: Early Years of an Orthodox Activist
During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a number of rabbis did their utmost to establish and maintain Orthodox Judaism in America.
Reality Check
The ritual is as familiar as preparing your taxes, and about as tedious. An American president leaves office and Israel is asked to make territorial concessions in one "final" attempt to make peace; a new American president takes office and Israel is asked to make territorial concessions in order to jump-start his peace efforts; Israel prevails militarily in a conflict and is asked to make territorial concessions as a "good-will gesture" to the vanquished; a new Israeli government comes to power is asked to make territorial concessions to show its good faith.
Master Builder: Rav Teitz and the Elizabeth Kehilla
One cannot think of Yiddishkeit in Elizabeth, New Jersey, without at the same time recalling the community's longtime leader, Harav Mordechai Pinchas Teitz, zt"l.
On Not Dancing To The Democrats Tune
It brings me no joy to say that Teresa Heinz Kerry is not worthy of being the first lady of the United States of America.
Candles On The Carmel
''We are three blocks away; you will be home in a minute.''
The taxi driver nudges me rudely into semi-consciousness. I try
to shake the fog from my head. I am still half asleep, staring
through the window at the Christmas lights. As consciousness
slowly seeps through, something here is out of place. Why is there
a giant Christmas tree on display in Budapest when it is months
after Christmas? I shake my head some more. No, it is not
Budapest. I left Budapest six hours ago and have been flying all
night. I must have succumbed to exhaustion on the ride up to
Haifa in the taxi from the airport.
The taxi driver nudges me rudely into semi-consciousness. I try
to shake the fog from my head. I am still half asleep, staring
through the window at the Christmas lights. As consciousness
slowly seeps through, something here is out of place. Why is there
a giant Christmas tree on display in Budapest when it is months
after Christmas? I shake my head some more. No, it is not
Budapest. I left Budapest six hours ago and have been flying all
night. I must have succumbed to exhaustion on the ride up to
Haifa in the taxi from the airport.
A ‘Coach Approach’ To Teshuvah
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.
‘Say It Ain’t So’… But It Was So
Much of childhood is spent in illusion. We grow up imagining things not as they are, but as we wish them to be.
Full Moon
The Fifteenth Day of the month of Av became a day of national rejoicing. The moment that had seemed hopeless became the moment of Redemption.
Face to Face With My Potential Killer
Interview with a suicide bomber in training
Behind The Left’s Betrayal Of Israel
The main title of my new book, From Ambivalence to Betrayal: The Left, the Jews, and Israel, may raise a few eyebrows. To what “betrayal” am I referring? Surely neither anti-Semitism nor hostility to Israel can be seen as prerogatives of leftism; and if they do exist in some quarters of the Left, is that not an example of “legitimate criticism” of Israel, a country regularly pilloried in international forums as one of the last remaining bastions of Western colonialism?
Monument To Life
In a macabre sort of way, this photo is an old friend. Having seen it so many times before, I am "comfortable" with the imagery.
Caveat Emptor – Beware of Grave Robbers
It is not uncommon for Observant Jews to want to be buried in Eretz Yisroel.
‘Apartheid,’ You Say?
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.
A Home For All Seasons
This is a beautiful land. The panoramic hills and valleys, the inimitable white stones, the kedushah embedded in every meter, the spicy melting pot of Jews. It fills the soul in a way nothing else can.
Return To Zion Reflections On My Aliyah
The first component began taking shape more than sixty-eight years ago when, as was my custom, I joined my father at Shabbat morning services in his synagogue on New York’s Lower East Side.