It’s Shabbos morning. I’m in shul, davening with the hashkamah minyan, where an undertone of chatter is definitely not the norm. For me, a frum-from-birth

From Johannesburg Shall Go Forth Torah  South Africa’s first native chief rabbi, who is successfully strengthening Yiddishkeit on the home front, has gone global with a worldwide learning program. Despite its relatively small size—an estimated population of 70,000—the South African Jewish community is thriving religiously. While the community is mostly traditional, it boasts a burgeoning […]

  In our cover story, we visit Orthodox communities across the country that have witnessed significant growth over the past few years. Places like Kansas City, Springfield, New Jersey and Detroit, Michigan are flourishing . . . the question is, why? We asked key players involved in building these and other frum communities: What are […]

A trio of resourceful rabbis discovered the winning recipe to creating a frum community from scratch. They identified regions where Jews were plentiful but Judaism was scarce, and employed the motto “Give them Torah and they will come.” It worked. South Jersey’s spiritual transformation began with three modern-day pioneers who set out to teach Torah […]

Who says you can’t live the out-of-town life without moving from the New York- metropolitan area? What if you could actually afford your dream home and your children’s tuition and live in an established frum community that is a mere hour-and-a-half from Manhattan? Apparently, you can. “I don’t know how much longer we are going […]

You would never know Detroit went bankrupt by the looks of two thriving frum communities close to the city. Oak Park and Southfield keep drawing scores of frum families to the area—and it seems like there’s no letting up. Growth from Within Shuls and communities must grow organically; in other words, the local Orthodox population […]

  Hurricane Sandy left the Oceanside, New York community, on the southern shore of Long Island, with many of its homes devastated and the Young Israel of Oceanside in shambles. The other shuls in Oceanside, Congregation Shaar Hashamayim, Darchei Noam and the Chabad of Oceanside, also suffered extensive damages. This past Rosh Hashanah, the 200-member […]

The pros and cons of sending frum kids to diverse community day schools

Hyman Brand, in Kansas City, is the first community day school to successfully integrate a fully Orthodox track, according to Rabbi Judah Isaacs, director of the OU

  Start a child upon his path, even when he ages he will not stray from it” (Mishlei 22:6). This verse, in its straightforward meaning (and as expounded by Rabbi Kalonymus Shapira in his introduction to Chovat Hatalmidim, contra the trend to cite the well-known first half of the verse while ignoring the crucial second part), […]

By David Wolkenfeld Emunah has two clear meanings in Tanach, neither one of which is exemplified by what we tend to associate with “faith” in a specific dogma.1 Emunah in Tanach can mean trust (as in Genesis 15:6, Numbers 20:12, Deuteronomy 1:31) and it can also refer to integrity (as in Deuteronomy 32:4). These understandings […]

Rafi Diamond’s day school course on Jewish prayer came at a fortuitous time a few years ago. Rafi was a student at Maimonides School, a K-12 Modern Orthodox institution in Boston. He was studying the “R’faeinu” (“Heal us”) prayer for health in the Shemoneh Esrei which includes the words “bring complete recovery for all our […]

In the American Modern Orthodox community, the widely acknowledged master of teaching tefillah was a Holocaust refugee from Germany who made a new home in Boston. Rabbi Isaiah Wohlgemuth, who had semichah from Berlin’s Hildesheimer Rabbinical Seminary and a doctorate in education from Boston’s now-defunct Calvin Coolidge College, is remembered by generations of students from […]

According to the late food historian Gil Marks, the first latkes, called kartoffelpfannkuchen, were fashioned from coarse potatoes fried in schmaltz (chicken fat).

Once Buried in Warsaw, These Menorot Are Now on Display in Jerusalem In May of 1943, SS General Jürgen Stroop triumphantly blew up the huge synagogue building that stood on Tlomackie  (pronounced Tlomatskyeh) Street, on the edge of the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw. To the Jews of Warsaw, the dedication of this palatial shul in […]

How to Take Shabbos into the Week It is not my intent to address the issue of Orthodox teens at risk, yet if this article can aid their parents or mentors, so much the better. Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik was wont to say that America has many Sabbath-observant Jews, but no erev-Sabbath-observant Jews. Shabbos is […]

Whether you spell it Chanukah or Hannukah, this festive winter holiday is associated with all sorts of latkes, sufganiyot and fried foods to celebrate the miracle of a small amount of oil miraculously lasting for eight days. The tradition of eating dairy dishes, particularly cheese, did not become popular until the Middle Ages. The story […]

Misconception: Tefillin must be checked twice every seven years to ensure that they are kosher. Fact: The halachah is that tefillin that have been checked and found to be kosher and are then used regularly are not required to be rechecked. Nonetheless, as a stringency, various customs have arisen regarding how often they should be […]

Speak to the children of Israel, and let them make for themselves tzitzit at the corners of their garments, for all generations.

Letters to President Clinton: Biblical Lessons on Faith and Leadership Edited by Rabbi Menachem Genack Sterling Ethos/OU Press New York, 2013 288 pages Reviewed by Richard Joel  In Letters to President Clinton: Biblical Lessons on Faith and Leadership, Rabbi Menachem Genack offers insight into the special relationship forged between himself and former President Bill Clinton […]

I’ve always been skeptical about “love at first sight” stories. Instant attraction is one thing, but I never believed that true love, the real deal, could blossom the instant one person first set eyes on another.

I write this just as my sixteen-year-old son is returning from Israel. He was fortunate to participate in one of the OU’s most spectacular programs, Yad B’Yad. Yachad/NJCD (National Jewish Council for Disabilities, an agency of the OU) brought seventy typical high school students to travel the length and breadth of our homeland, literally “hand-in-hand” […]

OU Press is proud to announce the republication of two books by celebrated historian Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff that have already become modern classics.