Our nation has been able to slowly begin to recover from the trauma of the Holocaust partly because of the revival and proliferation of Chassidic music. Ben Zion was the pioneer of this revival and the first to issue a recording of such music.
Why would the Torah dictate such a challenging set of laws, requiring that landowners relinquish their land and neither plant nor reap for an entire year? Many great sages have asked this question and have offered a variety of answers. The Rambam offers two very different reasons for shemitah. Firstly, that shemitah is but another […]
We live in an age of specialization, which has convinced us that even our greatest leaders excel in only a limited range of activities. It is the rare leader in whom we recognize a wide range of diverse achievements. Even among gedolei Yisrael in our history, we find some who specialized in halachah, others in […]
My birthday is on Purim. But my destiny seems to be linked with Tishah B’Av. For more than twenty years I have had the privilege of leading presentations of the kinot every Tishah B’Av morning. Initially I conducted these programs in my former synagogue, Shomrei Emunah of Baltimore, Maryland. There the attendance grew by leaps […]
Two facts stand out in every obituary written about Rav Elyashiv. One, of course, is the advanced age at which he died
What is it that distinguishes mankind from the rest of the animal world? Most readers would respond that it is Man’s power of reason, or his ability to speak, or perhaps it is the fact that he has a soul that makes him unique. These responses are consistent with the term Homo sapiens, which literally […]
The Jew who arrives early to the daily synagogue service will soon hear these words chanted: “Ashreinu . . . Happy are we, how good is our portion, How lovely our fate, how beautiful our heritage.” With these words, we express not only our allegiance to our tradition, but our enthusiasm for it. We do […]
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Prayer, tefillah, is an essential component of our religion and the centerpiece of the spiritual experience of every practicing Jew. And yet it is a difficult concept to define. Prayer is not one-dimensional, but rather has a different meaning depending upon the particular circumstance and the particular individual. The archetypal set of prayers is the […]