NEW YORK, NEW YORK - APRIL 21: For the fifth day, pro-Palestinian students occupy a central lawn on the Columbia University campus, on April 21, 2024 in New York City. Earlier in the week over 100 students were arrested by the police and suspended by the university for demonstrating against the war in Gaza and demanding the University divest from Israel. (Photo by Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images)

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Hamas College Takeovers

April 25, 2024 – 11:53 pm | Comments Off55 views

Over the past week, we have seen anti-Israel college takeovers with protestors openly declaring their desire to kill Jews and to render Israel—from the river to the sea—Juden Rein. The brazen tactics and bullying have left many Jewish students and faculty members afraid to venture onto campus. As we approach …

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Articles tagged with: relevant

Nezavim Vayelach: Relevance of Torah

August 25, 2013 – 4:09 am | Comments Off5,188 views

Redundant
In our Parsha, the Torah provides its own coordinates. “It is not in the heaven to say, who might rise to the heaven to bring it to us nor is it across the ocean to say, who might traverse the oceans to bring it to us.”[1]

Shmini: Whose Torah is it Anyway?

April 16, 2006 – 4:50 am | Comments Off2,429 views

Not for Me
“Rabbi, the Torah was written so many years ago. Its laws were never intended for the modern age, for the people of modern technology and enlightenment.” This pearl of wisdom was last dropped in my lap several weeks ago during a discussion about Torah and its laws.

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Chukat: For Another

Only G-d
The best way to reach G-d is to sacrifice everything for another. We learn this from a fascinating detail about the Red Heifer.
When Moses was told that it is possible to be purified even after contact with a dead body, he was surprised. Death, the absence of life, represents …

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Yearly Cycle »

Sukkot: The Prevailing Custom

A Custom Product
My earliest memories of the last day of Sukkot is of the market place set up in front of the large Synagogue of the Lubavitcher Rebbe in Brooklyn, New York. All night long, the sidewalk at 770 Eastern Parkway was a teeming marketplace of willow sales.
“Five dollars a …

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Concepts »

Ekev: Cancel Culture

Ekev: Cancel Culture
Cancel Culture is a phrase one hears a lot these days. Cancel culture is the idea that if you don’t agree or even appear to agree with my thoughts, I will cancel your very integrity, let alone your credibility.
The problem with cancel culture is that as one group …

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Rabbi’s Desk »

What Can We Do?

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 …

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