Jewish Action Fall 5763/2002                                                            Vol. 63 No. 1 FEATURES Talking About Breast Cancer          Renée Rosenfeld Is Yeshivah Education Accomplishing What It Should? (Part 11)           Chaim Eisen Orthodoxy’s Finest Hour: Rescue Efforts During the Holocaust David Kranzler Haftarah: Familiar Practices For Unfamiliar Reasons      Samuel N. Hoenig A Husband’s Promises          Jerry Lob ISRAEL […]

Despite the prevailing opinion that young women don’t get breast cancer, the reality is that they can and they do. In fact, one in every 258 women between the ages of 30 and 40 will be diagnosed with breast cancer within the next 10 years. Following are some additional startling facts about breast cancer in young women:

I remember thinking:
These are the intermediate days.
Spring.

…. The stroke that afflicted me wrought a spiritual metamorphosis in my whole Weltanschauung…when a person becomes afflicted by a stroke…a minute looseness takes effect in the well-integrated pattern and harmonious blend of soul and body. Consequently, the afflicted person is able to perceive the biological sensation of being sustained and carried by the soul within him….

The ba’alei musar tell us that perfection requires that one possess a combination of chesed (kindness) and gevurah (strength) which is tempered by emet (truth). My grandfather, Rav Ahron Soloveichik, exemplified all three.

I will remember that I am your husband and that I love you.
I will be kind to you. I will keep in mind all the stories about the incredible gentleness our gedolim, Rav Moshe Feinstein, zt”l, and Rav Yaakov Kamenetzky, zt”l, had toward their wives. And they will be my teachers in gentleness.

Misconception: Rebbi Yitzchak, whom Rashi–the commentator par excellence–cites in his commentary on the first verse of the Bible, is Rashi’s father.

It was well before sunrise when he pulled his car into the darkened parking lot. Stepping out onto the wet pavement, he paused to reflect on the events of the preceding evening that had brought him to this moment.

My rabbinic career began with a mission–to help individual neshamot (souls) in their relationship with God. When I became a physician, it was to cure the ills of the body. As a psychiatrist, I dealt with the mind. Finally, as a specialist in alcoholism and drugs, I dealt with the spirit.

“To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.…A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted….And also that it is the gift of God that every man should eat and drink, and enjoy the good of all his labor” (Eccles. 3; trans. by The Soncino Talmud, Davka Corp.).

When Efraim Zuroff’s book, The Response of Orthodox Jewry in the United States to the Holocaust: the Activities of the Vaad Ha-hatzala Rescue Committee, 1939-1945, first appeared in the spring of 2000, it created quite a stir with its accusations against Orthodox Jews and their rescue attempts during the Holocaust.

After the required aliyot are read, Kaddish is recited and the maftir is called up to the Torah. Several verses of the previous aliyah are repeated. The Torah scroll is lifted and rolled up. The designated section from the Prophets is now chanted.

The season of the cluttered mailbox is upon us. Invitations to the annual banquets of the Jewish federations, synagogue bodies, yeshivot and seminaries all compete for space and attention.

In Part I of this essay (see Winter 5762/2001), we considered two, relatively academic matters of the yeshivah curriculum as the most immediate questions to face in evaluating our performance in post-secondary yeshivah education.

On the first night of Rosh Hashanah, the meal begins with challah dipped in honey to symbolize sweetness, abundance and the hope for a sweet year ahead.

Consider this a draft notice from the IDF. Your home computer has been called up in defense of the Jewish State.
Relax. Do not expect IDF representatives to commandeer your laptop for the front. Rather, you are being asked to help reverse the ravages of war upon the Israeli economy.

A few days after the publication of The Life and Times of Rabbi Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz, I found a very respected Torah scholar at my morning minyan, in tallit and tefillin, poring over the book. This proved to me that the book was a “sefer,” and was to be studied as such.

Their appearance gives them away: The boys typically have spiky or long hair; the girls have multiple body piercings and hair colored in unnatural hues.
They are Israel’s street youth, a number of whom were formerly Orthodox but who, for one reason or another, call the streets of Jerusalem home, often falling victim to drugs, promiscuity and violence. Having dropped out of school, they leave home without means of support, and oftentimes have little if any relationship with their families.

Though his five sons are all grown, Rabbi Mordechai Scharf, 57, is still a full-time dad. Rabbi Scharf and his wife, Shoshana, are busy caring for their two foster children, ages 12 and 18.

Twelve years ago, Harel Hetzroni, 33, went through what many datlashim (formerly religious youth) are going through today. A yeshivah graduate, Hetzroni entered the Israeli army; by the end of his service, he was no longer wearing a kippah.

An attorney and mother of two, Rochelle Shoretz served as a law clerk to US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, becoming the first Orthodox Jewish woman to clerk for a Supreme Court judge. Two years ago, at the age of 28, Shoretz was diagnosed with breast cancer.