It was Yom Kippur, October 6th, 1973, when we first heard the news: Egypt and Syria had attacked Israel, unprovoked and without warning. Before we even broke our fast, we tuned in to the news on TV that night. We learned that Egypt had crossed the Suez Canal

It was Yom Kippur, October 6th, 1973, when we first heard the news: Egypt and Syria had attacked Israel, unprovoked and without warning. Before we even broke our fast, we tuned in to the news on TV that night. We learned that Egypt had crossed the Suez Canal on makeshift bridges and had attacked the Bar-Lev lines.

Approximately seven years ago I was approached by a group of individuals who were sincerely agonizing over the state of their commitment to Judaism. Although they had been raised in Orthodox homes and had attended fine yeshivos, they shared in common a general, painful awareness that “something inside had died;” leaving them observant and learned, but asleep. Together we undertook an experiment and embarked on what has proven to be a remarkable journey to reclaim our lost spirituality.

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Emunah [faith] which is pure gives the Jew a unique perspective on all of creation. He sees the Creator, may He be blessed, in all of existence. From the heights of Heaven to the depths of the earth he perceives the presence of the Creator in His creation. He feels the power of God in all that surrounds him. By the light of emunah he listens to the song of life which emanates from every creature.

Reb Moshe ben Chaim Peretz Weiss (1896-1973), universally known as Moshe “Gabbai” or Moshe “Batlan,” was twice a survivor. He was a physical survivor, being among a small number of Polish Jews who emerged from the First World War and the Holocaust. In a deeper sense, though, he was a spiritual survivor; one of the last of a “vanishing breed.”

Honey has always been an integral part of Judaism. First and foremost, there’s its integration into the meals of Rosh Hashanah and the rest of the High Holidays. Anyone who doesn’t dip challah in honey or overindulge in apples and honey really hasn’t gotten into the spirit of the Days of Awe. We use it to symbolize our hope for happiness and for a sweet new year.

The sense of a crisis within Religious Zionism has deepened and intensified during the recent past. Few within the Religious Zionist fold would dispute the existence of such a crisis. The manifestations of this are multifaceted, ranging from political frustration to abusive language, ad hominem attacks and even physical violence, on the one hand, and to persistent and perplexed questioning of the role of Torah shebe’al peh and the value of Torah lishmah, on the other.

Misconception: Three or more women forming a zimun (responsive introduction to Grace after Meals), especially in the presence of one or two men, is the product of late 20th century feminism and has no basis in traditional halachah. When such a zimun is formed the men present should leave.

I received a letter from a parent complaining that his child has developed a feeling of terror because he was taught that God would punish him severely for anything he did wrong. He asked whether there isn’t some way that children could be taught that yirat Shamayim does not mean this kind of fear.

In many Orthodox shuls today, talking during davening and layning, particularly on Shabbat, has become the norm. It is, in fact, a problem of epidemic proportions. Talking typically begins during Shacharit, gets worse during layning and haftorah, and rises to a crescendo during Mussaf. One of my friends recently quipped that in his shul, the baal tefillah for Mussaf could walk out during chazorat hashatz and no one would notice. Not funny.

Imagine standing on a street that the Tannaim might have walked on 1800 years ago — talk about touching our Jewish souls with our soles! Within the last ten years, the archaeologists’ spades have revealed much of the ancient city of Tzippori, one of the most important Jewish centers in the period of the Mishnah.

The great allure of Reb Nachman combined with his physical absence makes it inevitable that a variety of fringe elements should be trying to project their own ideas onto Breslov. Among the most conspicuous are followers of the late Reb Yisroel Ber Odesser, a Breslover Chassid who lived to be over 100 and who advocated the invocation of Reb Nachman’s name as a kind of mantra (“Na Nach Nachma Nachman miUman”).

The Six Day War produced a substantive change in Religious Zionism: until then it had been dominated by a realistic approach which related to the State of Israel as a place of refuge for the Jewish nation, where a Jew had the opportunity to direct his own life.

As for you, Jewish parents, do not forget that it was at the time when you yourselves were young that the decline began. Sin has made giant steps since you were young; keep guard over your children! Some already move in the direction of this sin in the tenth, ninth, eighth year. Test the schools, the playmates, the servants, the friends of the house! Know that vice enters into the circle of youth by every way.

Without question, no prayer in the whole of Jewish liturgy is as famous, and paradoxically, as unknown as the kaddish. Often referred to as the mourner’s prayer, this sanctification of God’s Name does not speak of death, mourning or redemption of souls, as many erroneously believe. These myths abound in spite of translated prayer books and numerous works analyzing the nature and chronicling the history of the kaddish.

An 8th generation Jerusalemite, Michael Ende was born in 1945 and began creating Judaica in 1970. He has become one of Israel’s leading designers of Jewish ceremonial art, winning numerous international design prizes and awards.

Poised between the aggressively anti-religious nationalism of mainstream secular Zionists and the passive Messianic faith of the bulk of believing Jews, nineteenth-century Religious Zionism was born on the horns of a dilemma. Embracing both horns, its leaders affirmed the validity of tradition and its divinely-assured Messianic Age, while arguing that human initiative, hardly distinguishable from the behavior of secular nationalists, was crucial to the Redemption of Israel.

Like most of my friends, I remember my senior year of high school as both an exciting and a stressful time. Whereas previously my biggest life decisions revolved around whether to take AP biology or physics, and what to do on weekends, now real decisions abounded, ones that I knew would affect the course of my future. Foremost among these decisions was which college to attend.

The sense of a crisis within Religious Zionism has deepened and intensified during the recent past. Few within the Religious Zionist fold would dispute the existence of such a crisis. The manifestations of this are multifaceted, ranging from political frustration to abusive language, ad hominem attacks and even physical violence, on the one hand, and to persistent and perplexed questioning of the role of Torah shebe’al peh and the value of Torah lishmah, on the other.

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The Summer 1993 issue of Jewish Action was a landmark edition, published in tribute to the late Rav Joseph B. Soloveitchik, zt”l.

Firstly, we have a strong belief in the centrality of Eretz Yisrael. We believe that in our generation, where we merited to witness the rebuilding of the State of Israel, it is incumbent upon us religious Jews to recognize the pivotal, central role Eretz Yisrael plays in Jewish education. Therefore since the inception of Touro, the college has had an organic tie with Israel.

Though the Chumash repeatedly identifies Sukkot as the last of the trio of regalim beginning with Pesach and Shavuot, we cannot help but experience it as a natural follow-up to our repentance of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur; the impression that Sukkot is also part of the Yamim Noraim is confirmed by midrashim.

A recent article in a psychiatric journal stated that the most common psychiatric diagnosis in adolescents today is “Oppositional Defiance Disorder.” This term refers to youngsters who refuse to defer to authority, and particularly to parental authority.

When we say the words “High Holidays,” one of the first thing we think of (besides teshuvah and what to wear to the services) is what are we going to serve for all those meals. We get caught up in the initial rush of preparing meals for Rosh Hashanah and for before and after Yom Kippur that when it comes time to figure out what we want to serve for Sukkot, we’re out of ideas (and energy).

Here are some quick tips to make your Yom Kippur fast a bit more bearable:

If the world’s strategic balance of power, Wall Street, globalization and the American economy, El Niño, continental drift, the San Andreas fault, and other major variables behave more or less as they have done in recent years, the demographic future of American Orthodoxy might be rather stable.

“Where Do You Want To Go Today?” is the pithy gauntlet thrown down by Microsoft. While Bill Gates’ question beckons to new vistas of fun and productivity, Jewish computer users might consider destinations in ancient time.

One of the greatest conflicts that has affected the Jewish nation dwelling in Zion in the past 50 years is the socioeconomic gap between the Sephardic and Ashkenazic communities.

I approach the writing of this piece itself with a sense of “trepidation and triumph.” Trepidation due to the sensitivity of the issue of Orthodoxy’s relation to feminism, and the storm of words surrounding it. And trepidation due to my desire that my contribution to this debate should only have as its result: l’haagdil Torah ul’haadirah –“to magnify Torah and make it glorious” (Is.42:31).

By Yochanan Sacks Bring us into the furrow of your brow for tomorrow we begin to think like you, train our thoughts with your face’s textures with the unbloomed smile you lay upon your word as the bell-peal spreads through the air to a deaf man not heard, but its quiverings seen in the leaves […]

Paradoxically, the impetus for personal change and growth may sometimes arise out of life experiences beyond our control. Many who suffer the loss of a loved one have commented that the loss was a defining event in their reevaluation of self and sense of purpose in the world.

The Emancipation, which began a little over 200 years ago, threw the Jewish people into a dizzying downward spiral from which we have only recently begun to recover. The new opportunities for advancement in general society introduced by the Emancipation seemed to be impeded by the demands of an ancient religion, and this perception triggered the movements of defection from the fold. In too many instances, the Jew was embarrassed by his Jewishness and strove to dilute the all-embracing character of his religion.

Confronted by the phalanx of questions included in this symposium, I find myself responding instinctively with two reservations. The first is the obvious rejoinder that such a range can hardly receive adequate treatment in the space allotted to each participant.

A few years ago, I had the opportunity to meet privately with one of the leading American roshei yeshivah in the Chareidi world. In the course of our conversation, I said to him that it would be wonderful if we could arrange a small learning program during the summer which would bring together the best talmidim from his yeshivah with those from Yeshiva University.

During the early part of the twentieth century American Jewry was characterized by profound ignorance and pervasive indifference. Ignorance and indifference were intertwined in a symbiotic relationship in which each nourished and nurtured the other. What passed for Jewish education was an embarrassment; there were few religious functionaries whose credentials inspired confidence; and erudite rabbinic scholarship was conspicuous in its absence. Endemic ignorance extended to every facet of Jewish law and ritual, history, lore, custom and practice.

I will address myself to the second point of the symposium questions which appears to me to be the crux from which the solutions to most of the other issues must flow. If our Judaism is going to lack the spiritual depth referred to, then we will be vulnerable to all the ills, potential or actual, touched upon in the other questions.

The symposium queries can really be summed up in one overarching question. Can genuine Orthodoxy regain its full impact on the Jewish community and bring back compliance with halachic living on a large scale in the context of modernity and living in a free society?

Kiddush Hashem. Joseph is often cited in this regard as a Jew who truly enlightened the world as a Jew, glorifying God’s name.1 The wisdom of God which he brought to bear upon the crisis facing the Egyptians prompted them to react in amazement and respect: “As God has informed you of all this, there is no wise and understanding person as you” (Genesis 41:39). Yet even as Joseph was remarkably successful in generating admiration for himself and his God, he nevertheless found it necessary to keep elements of his religious life “in the closet.” Thus he ate separately from the Egyptians because they could not bear to see him eat meat.

Jews were, in John Murray Cuddihy’s phrase, “latecomers to modernity.” Throughout Europe in the nineteenth century they found themselves suddenly exposed to a series of shattering changes. There was the intellectual challenge of the Enlightenment, the social drama of Emancipation, and throughout it all, at first no more than a discordant note but eventually a deafening crescendo, came the storm of anti-Semitism in which 80% of European Jewry was swept away.

Judaism teaches that spirituality is pursued in public as well as private realms. The “future of American Orthodoxy” will, thus, be played out on three stages: that of America and the world at large which we share with non-Jews, that of the Jewish people as a whole, both Orthodox and “not-yet-frum,” and internally in the communal and individual lives of shomrei Torah. A cautionary note: we may all speculate a bit about the future.

In the closing session of a semester-long course on the Megillot, I challenged my class to respond to excerpts from an article published in the 1970s which promoted the notion that Queen Esther is an anachronistic role model for the modern Jewish woman

Short of the coming of the Messiah, this has to be one of the best times ever to be an Orthodox Jew. Certainly, there has been nothing like it in the whole of the modern era. Just think: The State of Israel exists, with Jerusalem as its capital; communities that were decimated in the Holocaust have taken on new life in Israel and the United States; unprecedented numbers of individuals engage in advanced Talmud study; religious observance is at sky-high levels; educational efforts of every sort are thriving; and communal life is enriched by such diverse phenomena as the ArtScroll publications, gourmet kosher restaurants and new offerings of religious music.

What the Warren Commission said of the racial divide that separates black and white America, could be applied to the American Jewish Community as well. Religious and secular Jews are two separate and distinct groups that are growing further apart. (By religious, I mean the Orthodox community.

A generation ago, most “experts” agreed that American Orthodoxy was on the verge of extinction. At that time, the bulk of Orthodox Jewry consisted of socially and economically disadvantaged immigrants, who were looked upon as the “last of the Mohicans.” It was taken for granted that Orthodox Judaism could not survive, let alone flourish, in the free and open American environment.

Domestic violence in the Orthodox community is like a tear in the lining of a beautiful garment. The wearer of the garment knows it exists and feels it ripping, giving way with time. It is hidden from the outside observer until the damaged material slips out from underneath and becomes visible.

Myth: Every marriage has a few fights now and then. Crying “abuse” is just a way to get attention.

I received your letter a few days ago and was very pained by the anguish you have undergone for so many years because of your homosexuality and which is especially torturous to you now that you have become a baal teshuvah.