I grew up in the shadow of the Six-Day War. The impossible yardstick of this war measured every subsequent war in Israel. It redefined the term blitzkrieg as Israel rebuffed a three-nation attack and came away with land from each of them.
All this changed when we woke up on Friday, …
Apathetic Frostbite
The Baal Shem Tov taught that a Jew must utilize every encounter to gain inspiration inhis or her divine service. One winter day, the Baal Shem Tov’s students noticed a cross engraved in a sheet of ice and asked their rabbi what inspiration might be derived from a cross. …
A Silent Response
During his inauguration to the High Priesthood, Aaron lost two sons. In response to tragedy Aaron was silent.[1] As High Priest, Aaron was permitted to enter the Holy of Holies on occasion, but only in silence – without bells on his tunic.[2] Silence seems to be thematic to …
Refuge is discussed often in the Torah. When a Jew killed another inadvertently, he was required to flee to a city of refuge, where he was given asylum from the victim’s relatives. These cities were established throughout the land of Israel to ensure that inadvertent killers had sufficient and easy …
I am not distraught, I am angry. I don’t know why this shooting, this mindless taking of life, was the string that broke my camel’s back, but it did.
The suspect says he did it for Palestine. Do you believe him? I don’t. I bet he did it because he was …
These past two days have been the most difficult for our people in the last fifty years. It was Simchat Torah, a time for rejoicing, yet it was a time of horror. Nearly a thousand members of our family were brutally murdered, more than a hundred were taken hostage, and …
