Summer 2008(5768)

With the abundance of fresh fruits and vegetables, I am always inspired to try out new recipes during summer. I hope you will be, too!

Children born in the post-Holocaust era of the 1940s, 50s and 60s grew up knowing their parents had gone through hell on earth. The ghosts of murdered grandparents, aunts, uncles and siblings loomed large in their homes by their very absence. Sounds like an atmosphere ripe for major crises in faith. Yet, from many of […]

Rabbi Ephraim Oshry served as the spiritual leader of the Kovno Ghetto during the Holocaust. Highly regarded as a scholar, he was presented with many questions about Jewish law amidst the hardships of ghetto life. Rabbi Oshry wrote the questions and answers on scraps of paper torn from concrete sacks, placed these notes into tin […]

“There were always choices to make,” recalled the Austrian-born Jew Viktor Frankl after enduring three years in Auschwitz and concentration camps under the Third Reich.

I begin, and end, in the same place: decimation. The title of the appendix of this autobiography, Between My Father and the Old Fool, reads,

I am a mainstream Modern Orthodox Jew, a product of the Jewish day school movement. I’ve served on the boards of the last two shuls to which I’ve belonged. I enjoy opening up a Gemara and studying its wisdom. My greatest joy would be to see my children grow up to be even more religiously […]

Misconception: Aveilim (mourners) stop sitting shivah on erev Shabbat at noon. Fact: Private displays of mourning continue on Shabbat, while the public aspects of shivah cease shortly before Shabbat.1 Background: For the first seven days following the burial of a first-degree relative (father, mother, brother, sister, son, daughter or spouse), one observes a period of […]

In a series of weekly e-mails that Rabbi Steven Pruzansky sent to members of his shul while living in Modiin, Israel, for several months this past year, the New Jersey rabbi recorded his observations about Israeli life. Here are some of his reflections. A New Hat As my black Shabbat hat has never traveled well, […]

We received many letters in response to our interview with Torah Codes researcher Harold Gans (fall 2007). Here is a sampling of the letters. Ed. With regard to “Up Close with Torah Codes Researcher Harold Gans,” I have two objections. Hypothesis testing is a well-developed branch of statistics. I can’t believe that designing and executing […]

The past 125 years have seen the miraculous return of our people to our ancient homeland—Eretz Yisrael. This is nothing short of astounding when you consider that in 1880 there were approximately 10,000 to 20,000 Jews in Ottoman Palestine, less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the world Jewish population. The first waves of aliyah, […]

At this point in history, with Jerusalem the focus of attention in political negotiations, it seems particularly appropriate to revisit the topic of the holy city and its unique halachic status.

Avraham, a student at Yeshiva University who was about to start dating, recently became aware of a painful fact: his grandmother’s conversion to Judaism put his own Jewish status in question. His grandmother had converted to Judaism in the 1940s in order to marry his grandfather, but the officiating Orthodox rabbi in the community, who […]

“Like sheep to the slaughter.” To many Jews, the Holocaust represents our shameful, oppressed past. “Why should we teach our children about the disgrace of their ancestors? No heroes, no rulers …?” asks a well-known Israeli author. To him, the Holocaust has no meaning, no lessons we can learn. How untrue! It’s just that the […]

In 1967, at the height of the Vietnam War, Chaplain (Colonel) Sanford Dresin, having just received semichah from Yeshivas Chasam Sofer in Brooklyn, New York, became an Army chaplain. After serving two years on a United States Army base in Fort Meade, Maryland, he knew that if he remained on active duty, the next stop […]

Writer Mindy Salazar spoke with Sarai Kashnow about the challenges of being a military spouse, the “toughest job in the military.” Sergeant Joseph Kashnow, and his wife, Sarai, both in their twenties, did not have a typical “shanah rishonah” (first year of marriage). Only three months after getting married in January 2003, Joe was deployed […]