Misconception: It is ideal to hold the lulav (along with the hadasim and aravot) and the etrog together in one hand. Fact: It is preferable to hold them in separate hands.

The recession of 2008 may have left thousands of Orthodox Jews out of work, but apparently not out of hope.

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 […]

By Adina Bar Shalom With Toby Klein Greenwald I first met Rabbanit Adina Bar Shalom, the daughter of Rav Ovadia Yosef, z”l, in the spring of 2007, on a visit to the Haredi College of Jerusalem, founded in 2001, which was housed in a community center in a decrepit part of the Romema neighborhood of […]

It is especially vital for the American tourist or student who will be spending the year in Israel learning in yeshivah or seminary to get a firm grasp of the mitzvah and its practical applications.

Why the entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well and booming in the Orthodox community

  “Renew our days as of old” Have you ever imagined what Avraham and Sarah or the generation of Joshua that entered the Land of Israel after forty years in the desert saw here? Was it the barren hills that still characterize so much of Israel today? Or perhaps, based on many references to the […]

A story about Murray Gell-Mann and Richard Feynman, both Nobel Laureates in physics, captures some of the challenge presented by certain kinds of greatness. A student once said to Gell-Mann about some physics problem, “Why don’t we apply the Feynman method?” Gell-Mann said

It’s back-to-school time and harried parents everywhere are short on time! Easy, economical meals are ideal for time-starved families. SWEET AND SOUR MEATLOAF Yields 8 servings Instead of rolling ground meat into meatballs, make meatloaf! Same terrific taste, but half the work! Leftover meatloaf can be used in sandwiches and makes a perfect lunchbox addition. […]

The seeds of entrepreneurship were implanted in twenty-five-year-old Chaya Fishman at a young age. After a teacher challenged her to fill the need for a creative arts summer program for girls in her hometown of Cleveland, Ohio, Fishman chose to act on it.

By Charles and Elie Traube Heart disease is the number-one cause of death in the United States. While data on the incidence of heart disease in the frum community does not currently exist, there is no question that our cholesterol-rich, kugel-laden diets and sedentary lifestyle put us at a greater risk of developing heart disease […]

“Hi Rabbi, while we’re Orthodox, our cousins belong to the Reform Temple in your neighborhood. They’ll be celebrating their son’s bar mitzvah in a few months. Would a family in your shul be willing to host my wife and me so we can stop in and wish our cousins mazal tov?” “Hi Rabbi, I was […]

Journalist Toby Klein Greenwald speaks with Rabbi Dr. Binyamin Lau, one of the foremost experts on Rav Ovadia Yosef. TG: What was Rav Ovadia’s true opinion about the religious significance of the State of Israel? BL: He wasn’t different from most of the Jerusalem rabbis who were the talmidim of the Vilna Gaon, such as […]

  The passing of Rav Ovadia Yosef, zt”l, last year marked the end of a remarkable life, brilliant mind and revolutionary posek. As others have noted, Rav Ovadia reinstated the Sephardic tradition of following Rav Yosef Karo’s Shulchan Aruch, which had previously been surpassed by the Ben Ish Chai. Rav Yosef accomplished this through encyclopedic […]

“Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” Such is the attitude of forty-eight-year-old Chaya Ruchi Gross, a Satmar wife, mother and grandmother. Gross is also the founder and CEO of Dynamic Kitchen Design & Interiors, a company with annual sales reaching seven digits located in Spring Valley, New York. Gross, who usually takes on

By Naomi Ross “I’m trying to stay away from kugels these days. They’re just too high in fats and sugars and my family doesn’t even want them anymore.” This is a familiar sentiment echoed in many of the cooking classes I’ve taught in recent years. But if traditional Ashkenazic Jewish cuisine is becoming passé and […]

  During the 1800s, the sending of greeting cards for all sorts of occasions, mostly in the form of postcards, became hugely popular in Europe, including among Jews. Toward the end of the century, the waves of Jewish immigrants to North America brought with them this practice and began importing a wide variety of Rosh […]

Headlines: A Halachic Debate of Current Events By Dovid Lichtenstein OU Press Orthodox Jews are no strangers to controversy. Media attention, welcome or otherwise, is a regular feature of life for our community and provides rich material for debate and discussion, both in our real-life interactions as well as in our virtual ones. In these […]

In Brooklyn’s heavily Orthodox, increasingly Chassidic Boro Park neighborhood, the sound of the shofar, blaring out of open synagogue windows throughout both days of Rosh Hashanah, provides a soundtrack for passing drivers and pedestrians. But, as in any area, especially in one filled with young mothers and aging Holocaust survivors, many people can’t make it […]

Why am I using fluorescent green products to clean my baby’s bottle? Dana Rubinstein, a mother and attorney, asked herself this question five years ago. Aware that her friend Tamar Rosenthal had a three-year-old daughter who was allergic to conventional cleaning products, Rubinstein called her friend and inquired about safer alternative cleaning products for baby bottles.

Salfer continuously emphasizes that in order to succeed at entrepreneurship, one cannot be afraid of making mistakes, even big mistakes.

L’Chaim: 18 Chapters to Live By By Shmuel Shields, PhD Brand Name Publishing Jerusalem, 2012 228 pages Reviewed by Shira Isenberg Few nutrition and health books are written for a frum audience, factoring in the unique aspects of our lifestyle, like Shabbat and yom tov foods—and not for lack of need. With L’Chaim: 18 Chapters […]

The sky hung low as I drove upstate to the Eastern Correctional Facility in Napanoch, New York, this past May. I had never been to a prison before. Yet, here I was, traveling to the edge of the Catskills to visit a maximum-security prison. I came to observe Rabbi Moshe Frank at work as a […]

With the recent celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Mizrachi Religious Zionists of America, we highlight the life of Rabbi Meir Bar-Ilan, the founder of the movement. By Rafael Medoff In 1943, at a time when no organized Jewish lobby in Washington existed, Rabbi Meir Bar-Ilan undertook an extraordinary one-man lobbying mission to Capitol Hill […]