90 — Getting Your Goat Or Let it Stew Our Gemara on Amud Beis discusses what sacrifice takes precedence — the more holy (mekudash) sacrifice or the one that is brought more often (tadir)? For example, what gets sprinkled first: the blood from…
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Getting Your Goat Or Let it Stew and More Zevachim 90-92
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Zionist’s Guide to the World Cup–Yet More Preemptive Loathing
WARNING: The following column contains Recency-Bias-Induced-Analysis. Some countries will be judged based on their actions since October 7, 2023, and not on whatever philo-Semitic behavior their national histories may feature in the more…
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NYC Detective’s Observation- Israel Wants to Arrest Firefighter for Water Damage
By Dr. Shmuel Legesse Former NYC Supreme Court Investigator/Detective; Upcoming Author of Moral Diplomacy for a Broken World, inspired by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks When I was an investigator/detective for the New York City Supreme Court I learned an…
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Of Merchants and Canaanites – socher, rochel, tagar, and c’naani
The Bible reports that around the same time that Joseph was sold as a slave in Egypt, his older brother Judah met the daughter of a man named Shua and married her. Shua is described as an ish c’naani (Gen. 38:1), which typically would mean…
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Vayeshev — Now Is the Time to Come Together
Approximately a century and a half ago, the illustrious Volozhin Yeshiva — eim ha-yeshivos of Lithuania — found itself in a moment of uncertainty. With the passing of Rav Itzele Volozhiner, son of Rav Chaim who had founded the yeshiva, the…
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Simplified Jewishness: A Shema anthology – diary
Sharing my edited covid-diary extract of Feelings about our single most familiar six word declaration: The Shema; six ‘Standard’ and four ‘more Modern’ translations, & Then some of mine → six lines/couplets/or-stanzas – as paragraphs;…
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How the UAE Became an Emerging Superpower in the Global AI Economy
For decades, the United Arab Emirates was caricatured as a glamorous consumer of technology—an economy that imported innovation the way it imported luxury brands. In the Western imagination, Abu Dhabi and Dubai built futuristic skylines and…
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The War Both Morocco and Algeria Fear to Win
Both Morocco and Algeria survive on the same dangerous truth: their regimes need the Polisario Front. Not to defeat it, not to resolve the conflict—but to justify their own existence. Morocco looks triumphant on paper. The UN leans toward…
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Divine Encounter Parashat Vayishlach Part 2
The following essay is a revised version of the d’var Torah I posted here in 2024 . This year I have re-edited it also into two parts. Part 2: The Only Thing to Fear… Sometimes, before we can see the divine in someone, another step…
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I would like to meet you
A man in a black suit walks forward. His pace is steady. From behind, he seems taller. His background is black, and only the outline of his form is visible—due to his blond hair, which glows faintly. Now he begins to hobble backward, yet he…
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