Category: Other

Parashat Beshalach and the Anxiety of “Not Enough”
We tend to explain overconsumption as a cultural failure- advertising, capitalism, lack of restraint. Parashat Beshalach offers a sharper diagnosis: excessive consumption is often a…

I recently visited my daughter, a 19-year-old American in Israel, to see firsthand the unusual life she has chosen for herself. What I saw astounded me. Despite Israel’s existential threats, Israeli society feels alive, healthy, and hopeful…

Standing a Little Higher: Thoughts from a Yud Shevat Farbrengen

Rabbi Anchelle Perl – January 28, 2026

L’chaim, l’chaim…May this farbrengen be one that opens hearts, not just minds.

Tonight is not just another date on the calendar….

When President Trump declared that help was on the way and invited the Iranians to attack their institution, there was some support here. And fear, of course. The last war with Iran six months prior left many Israelis even more traumatized,…

There are moments in Torah learning that feel almost electric—when a sugya (section) of Gemara suddenly aligns with a parashah in Chumash, and two seemingly unrelated branches merge into a single, powerful trunk. In those moments, we do…

Everything in the Middle East has changed and yet has somehow stayed the same. As internet services are slowly restored in Iran, the landscape of brutality directed at the population daring to protest poverty, corruption, and the bleakest of…

Last year, when I signed up for the Birthright Israel Onward internship program, I wasn’t sure…

A life shaped by survival, sustained by choice

Edna Stefania Brill arrived in Israel in 1951 after surviving the Warsaw Ghetto, fighting as a decorated child soldier in the Polish resistance, and enduring years of war.

She did not arrive…

This week many of us took off our yellow ribbons and removed our hostage dog tags. The last of the captives, Sgt-Major Ran Gvili, of blessed memory, who fell defending his community (he fought to the last bullet, with a broken arm!) on…

On January 27, International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Dr. Arūnas Bubnys, Director General of the Lithuanian Genocide and Resistance Research Center (LGGRTC), stood at the Tuskulėnai Memorial and spoke about the Holocaust.

This was not…