Issue

Volume # 0

Spring 1997(5757)

In this issue
Opinion

Custom-Made Torah

Not infrequently, people will say to me, “You know, I take the daily message in your Living Each Day quite personally. It’s uncanny — the message for a particular day is often one that applies to my situation for that day. How could you possibly have foreseen anything like that?”

Science & Technology

Hebrew Under Windows

Users of Hebrew on a PC have special needs. In exploring some of the options available to you, I’ll look at Hebrew/English word processors and discuss the issue of accessing Web sites with Hebrew embedded in them.

Passover

Taking Matzoh in Hand

The Kabbalists divide reality into three categories: olam, shanah and nefesh — world, time and soul. The holiday of Pesach — the holiday of freedom — can be seen as expressing freedom in all these areas.

Israel

Secret Chambers of the Temple Mount

Our story of the secret chambers of the Temple Mount begins in the early 1860s. At that time, more than half of Jerusalem’s Jewish and Christian populations were suffering from the ill effects of the city’s polluted water supply.

Tribute

The Indefinable Rebbe of Zhiskoverizh

To look at him, one would think he was viewing a simple baker, a shoemaker or nuclear physicist. Yet to his followers (and they are legion), he was known affectionately as the Zhiskoverizher. The term was not used lightly, nor easily spelled. Even now, I quake to say it

Business and Economics

Are We Still Ozinists?

Just a few years ago, when I was a naive little child, I was raised to believe that far from my home in Hoboken was a wonderful place — a place where people like me could live and learn as God meant us to. I always dreamed that someday I would go there — and my little dog too.

Opinion

Achdus – Yes! Merger – No!

I read with interest Dr. Richard Lopchinsky’s essay in the Winter 5757 issue of Jewish Action, advocating a merger of the Orthodox Union with the National Council of Young Israel. I, too, share Dr. Lopchinsky’s sense of kinship to both these mainstream Orthodox organizations: I number among my rabbinical colleagues and friends, individuals who have been among the leaders of the Union, NCSY and its affiliates.

Passover

Beyond Matzoh Balls

Most people think that Pesach is a celebration of our release from Egyptian bondage and deliverance into Israel. Yet for me it is the time of the great debate. Do I serve floaters or sinkers with the chicken soup? I grew up with sinkers and my husband was raised with floaters.

Reviews

Conversations on Being Jewish in Today’s World

“Is that all there is?” is the question at the core of a spiritual search of a young American Jew in Rabbi Emanuel Feldman’s new book, On Judaism. The book is a dialogue between the young attorney, David, and the rabbi who will be his mentor.

Business

Tools of Social Capital

In 1996, numerous articles appeared in the media regarding an unprecedented phenomenon that will occur in the United States over the next 30 years: the largest potential intergenerational transfer of wealth ever to occur in the history of the world.

Tribute

Isaac Breuer: “Legitimate Revolutionary”

As a historian, I am supposed to adopt a professionally critical attitude and strive for utmost objectivity. As a son and pupil whose vivid memories of his father and teacher have not faded since he passed away 50 years ago, I am still under the impact of an everyday encounter with the towering personality of a great man, a great Jew and a loving father.

Aliyah

Financial Planning for Aliyah

My experience over the past ten years in helping hundreds of families financially plan for aliyah has taught me that when it comes to attending to the myriad “details” — finding a job, a place to live, a school for your children — you really need to turn to the “pros.” Tehilla, the Union for Religious Aliyah, is your best bet. They will help you both professionally and socially.

Jewish Living

Frumspeak

At last someone has done something to render Elizabethan English into a language today’s yeshivah students can understand! Included in Frumspeak: The First Dictionary of Yeshivish by Chaim M. Weiser are samples of classic literature, treated to a Yeshivish update. Here are two geshmak selections for our chashuve Jewish Faction oilam.