This past Shavuot, Yona Baumel, eighty-one, returned his soul to his Creator, without his son Zecharya having been returned to him. Zecharya and five other soldiers were missing after the chaotic battle in the Lebanese village of Sultan Yakoub, marked by a Syrian ambush of the Israeli forces. It was June 1982, at the beginning […]
Memories of a Third-Generation American Assimilated Jew and How She Found Her Way Back to the Land Her Soul Calls Home My father doesn’t sit and say Tehillim, humming the words the way his father did. Still, there is one chapter of Tehillim he remembers. He doesn’t call it Tehillim Kaf Gimmel. He calls it […]
I grew up in a home where we usually watched Saturday morning cartoons on television, where we often ate chazir, where we sometimes opened presents set under a Christmas tree. In the context of American Jewry a half-century ago, of “religious school” a few days a week that culminated in a Bar Mitzvah—sometimes a Bat […]
Meditations at Sixty: One Person, Under God, Indivisible (Kashrut, Modesty, Mourning, Prayer and Love) By Eliyahu Safran Ktav Publishing House Jersey City, New Jersey, 2008 199 pages Rabbi Dr. Eliyahu Safran comes from a great tradition of distinguished sages who bequeathed to their posterity, and to all of us, a deeper awareness and appreciation of […]
Mark My Words! By Mark Hasten with Peter Weisz Brotchin Books Indianapolis, 2004 391 pages I was skeptical when I picked up the autobiography of Mark Hasten, Mark My Words! I had never heard of Hasten—proof, once again, that humility is alive and well. A person can achieve great things without making a big deal […]
. . . IN THIS LIES THE SECRET of the table [in the Tabernacle of the desert]. For since the time that the world came into existence, God’s blessing did not create something from nothing: instead the world follows its natural course [haolam keminhago noheg]. . . . But when the root of the matter […]
Q: What’s the deal with swine flu? Is there any way I can change my diet to prevent getting it? A: Now that flu season is here, this viral infection of the respiratory tract is not to be taken lightly. Despite the tight control health professionals have over many infectious diseases, the flu—or influenza—is still […]
MISCONCEPTION:1 In 1925, in Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak HaCohen Kook’s invocation for the inauguration of the Hebrew University, he applied the Biblical verse “Ki miTzion tetzei Torah, u’devar Hashem meYerushalayim, For out of Zion shall go forth Torah, and the word of God from Jerusalem” (Isaiah 2:3; Michah 4:2).2 This is an oft-used criticism cited by […]
In a typical month in the Houston area, members of the Jewish community study aspects of Jewish law and philosophy with kollel rabbis, Jewish residents of a nearby suburb attend Shabbaton programs and lectures led by the rabbis of Houston’s largest Orthodox synagogue and Jewish students at the city’s public high schools spend their free […]
In recent years, an increasing number of young rabbis have been moving to congregations that are quite a distance from major Jewish population centers. Settling in small communities with little or no Jewish infrastructure, these idealistic rabbis and their wives are moser nefesh to bring Torah to Jews who often have limited Jewish knowledge. In […]