July 4, 1976: Americans were jubilantly celebrating the bicentennial with fireworks, nautical parades and a visit from Queen Elizabeth bearing a replica of the Liberty Bell, proudly letting freedom ring. For Israelis and for Jews around the world, the celebration of freedom was a cruel reminder that 106 of our brothers and sisters, including children and the elderly, were the antithesis of “free.”
In May of 2013, Time magazine published a cover story entitled “Millennials: The Me Me Me Generation.” Defined in the article as the generation born roughly between 1980 and 2000, millennials tend to be, according to a decade of research, lazy, entitled and over-confident. Fortunately, every generation has its exceptions.
Standing up for Israel is nothing new. Before and after 1948, anyone who loved and believed in our homeland was prepared to defend her to the rest of the world. Do you remember when we were teenagers? Israel was a source of pride and joy, a country that rose from the ashes; David emerging victorious […]
This past summer, I had the privilege to participate in two OU solidarity missions to Israel—the first with fellow members of OU communities and the second with rabbinic leaders from across America. Over the course of these missions, I was able to meet with families living in southern Israel who were subjected to a constant […]
As I write this message at the end of July, our people are mourning the senseless loss of three innocent teenagers kidnapped and murdered by vicious terrorists. As of today, sixty-four of our brave soldiers have been killed defending Israel against Hamas’s endless barrage of rocket attacks. We do not have to recount tragedies of […]
I write this just as my sixteen-year-old son is returning from Israel. He was fortunate to participate in one of the OU’s most spectacular programs, Yad B’Yad. Yachad/NJCD (National Jewish Council for Disabilities, an agency of the OU) brought seventy typical high school students to travel the length and breadth of our homeland, literally “hand-in-hand” […]
Below is a synopsis by Rabbi Steven Weil of a brilliant and influential speech delivered in 1975 by Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik where he outlined the role of creativity and conservation in Torah. F
The desert boasts magnificent fauna. From elaborate cacti to colorful flowers to unusual trees, the landscape of the desert is replete with plant life that is unique not only in its beauty, but in its ability to withstand the harsh climate extremes. With so many impressive choices, why would God first appear to Moshe in […]
We pray three times each day, but how often do we think about what prayer is or how it works? The exercise of prayer is fundamental in Judaism—it is, according to Chazal, “worship of the heart” and one of the pillars upon which the world rests. The Jewish concept of prayer is also extremely different […]
We often have the tendency to look for the “tzuris.” There certainly are enough problems to go around, and because the negatives tend