I bought couches. They are beige, with button detail on the sides and dark wood trim. I bought a variety of pillows to go on them, chocolate brown and light blue—silk, suede and cotton. I rearranged the living room furniture (what there was of it) to accommodate my new purchases. It looked great. Friends came […]

The arrival of spring ushers in new, lighter foods. Your taste buds will surely appreciate some of these refreshing spring recipes. Hummus 8 appetizer servings, approximately 14 hors d’oeuvres servings, approximately This dish is especially tasty when served with cucumbers, radishes, bell peppers and toasted pita triangles. 8 unpeeled garlic cloves, wrapped in foil 15-ounce […]

I’ve heard it said that Jewish history can be summed up like this: Someone tried to destroy us,

The Jewish State was conceived in dreams—dreams of a glorious past and hopes for an even more glorious future. Only dreamers, disdainful of reality and inspired

Twenty years ago Jewish Action devoted the better part of an issue to analyzing “Israel at Forty.” At the time, the mood was cautiously optimistic and there was a strong sense of Jewish unity. Unfortunately, in Israel today the scene is quite different. One sees much conflict and confusion; there seems to be a pervasive […]

One of the most hackneyed things one can say about Israel is that it is a land of contrasts, which is, perhaps, a polite way of saying that it is a land of contradictions; and that, in turn, may be a polite way of saying that Israel is not a normal country, despite the best […]

Yom Hazikaron (Israel’s Memorial Day) and Yom Ha’atzmaut (Israel’s Independence Day), two consecutive days in May, dramatize both the pain of sacrifice and the joy of having a Jewish state. These conflicting emotions are encapsulated in the Gush Etzion region.

In the winter of 2001, David Rubin and his three-year-old son Reuven (“Ruby”) were driving on Patriarch’s Road from Jerusalem to their home in Shiloh, the route taken by Abraham and Sarah on their journey from Haran down into Egypt, when a hail of bullets suddenly sprayed into the car.

Ask any parent to name the greatest health risk they fear for their children, and most likely the answer will be “cancer.” But in reality, a much more dangerous health risk faces our children today, one, in fact, for which we—as parents and as a community—are largely responsible: obesity.1 Obesity kills more Americans each year […]

Many Orthodox Jews seem to think that as long as the food is kosher, what one eats is not so important. They believe that if having five servings of fresh fruits and vegetables daily were vital to our health, that fact would have made its way into the Torah. Truthfully, it’s simply convenient to think […]

A strange thing happened on the way to my becoming a ba’alat teshuvah: I discovered I was not a Jew. I made this discovery about fifteen years ago at the happy and lively Shabbat table of an engaging kiruv rabbi and his family, another one of those inspiring Shabbat meals that had attracted us to […]

It was the first night of Pesach, and on a holiday that celebrates questions, I began by asking one. “Where are we tonight?” We were 150 people, participants in a communal Seder I led last year in Timisoara, a Romanian city in the western part of the country near the Hungarian border. We were in […]

Misconception: The early Zionists were offered, and nearly accepted, Uganda as the Jewish homeland. This demonstrates that Zionist Leader Theodor (Benjamin Ze’ev) Herzl supporters were indifferent to the historic Jewish homeland and did not appreciate the unique relationship between the Jews and the Land of Israel. Fact: None of the land offered by the British […]

Participating in a Seder comes naturally to those who grew up in observant families or who had the benefit of a Jewish day school education. But what about ba’alei teshuvah or those who don’t have an extensive Jewish background? What if the guests at your Seder don’t know much about Pesach? Anyone with the proper […]

If God ever needed a PR person to handle the foreign account, He found it in Binyamin Jolkovsky. We all know who is in charge of the domestic part of the PR operation for Torah interests. If we wanted to showcase Judaism to Jews who know little or nothing about authentic Judaism, we would send […]

Any evaluation of Israel at sixty must weigh the reality of the State against the Messianic expectations of a large segment of Orthodox Jews. For those who envisioned that the State would herald the Messianic Era, there’s bound to be disillusionment. After the tragedy of the Holocaust, the establishment of the State gave the Jewish […]

General Mordechai Piron fought in four Israeli wars without a grenade, M-16 or Uzi. Armed with a holy sefer Torah and the power of an encouraging word, for thirty-four years the former chief rabbi of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) placed himself in mortal danger on front line after perilous front line to support thousands […]