Category: Other

A year ago, as stories emerged of a massive “Jew hunt” in Amsterdam, we knew immediately: this time was different.

Fighting antisemitism is our common mission. Yet this marked the first time in our lifetimes we were witnessing an actual…

Grandma squinted to see better. She examined the earrings in the box meticulously, turning each one from side to side to see it from a different angle. Several times she picked up one of them and placed it against the light, and then…

It is a story that we all know and love. Yet, on reflection, it seems a little too familiar.

Avraham is sitting at the entrance of his tent. The sun beats down mercilessly on the plains of Mamre. Three people approach. Avraham, the exemplary…

God is an impossible Being to comprehend.

The first man to discover this is the first Jew—Avraham. Avraham is the prototype of every Jew. And his greatest trial is what is experienced by all Jews: the impossibility of identifying God in…

Parashah Vayerá – Where the tent opens to the Other, there the Eternal appears

“The Eternal appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day” (Genesis 18:1).

Vaierá is not just…

A Hasidic Reflection on Creation, Courage, and Compassion

There is a rabbi in the Talmud who is rarely quoted from the pulpit. His name is Rav Papa. He was not a mystic or miracle-worker but a realist — a sage who saw the Divine not in…

Much has been written and contested about him, his positions, the threat he does or doesn’t pose to Jewish life in New York and beyond. The mayor of New York has no say in…

The New Old Normal: Jew-Hatred Reloaded

The world has changed or perhaps, it has simply shown its true face again.
The moral compass of our so-called “civilized” society is broken beyond repair. What began as a dangerous attempt to mix…

The issue of ultra-Orthodox army service has become a very hot topic once again. So hot, in fact, that Yair Lapid – leader of the Opposition and head of the Yesh Atid party, normally a middle-of-the-road politician – announced that when…