February 2012
8 posts
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Five Ideas I Hope to Pass On to My Children
by Emuna Braverman Here’s my list. What’s yours?
1. There is one God and one power.
This idea is at the root of all others. Without this idea, the world is hard and cold and random. With it, there is hope and meaning and purpose. There is loving and giving and caring. It is the source of their recognition that there are moral choices to be made and their clarity on how to make them. This...
Kollel Finances! Please forward, this is great! →
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“In advance of a public Talmudic address, Reb Yisroel Salanter posted a list of a...”
– http://www.tzemachdovid.org/gedolim/jo/tprofile/rsalanter.html
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“Do the following once a day. (if this is too much, maybe do one/day)
1. Spend...”
– Rav Avigdor Miller zt’l
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A Quebec Jew
by Steve McDonald From Catholic Bloc Québécois MP to staunch Jewish activist.
By changing religion, was I reneging on part of my identity? Or was I adding to it? How were my family and my friends going to see me? Were they going to see me as “the Jew”?
How was my father, a deeply religious and practicing Catholic, going to react? My head was reeling as I thought of my mother, my sister, my...
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“After the assassination of Tsar Alexander II of Russia, a government official in...”
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Those Who Can, Teach
by Michael Steinberg I’m not a rabbi, I never studied in yeshiva, and there’s so much I don’t know. So why am I teaching Torah?
I’m almost 60 and I just started teaching Torah. I never expected to do this – but now I see that I can. In fact, I think I must. Let me explain.
I did not start out on the path of Torah. Growing up in Queens in the 1950s, my upbringing was secular: no God, no shul,...
January 2012
5 posts
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Kosher Symbol →
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“Moses Montefiore z’l was renowned for his quick and sharp wit. At a dinner...”
– Wikipedia
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Shabbat Comes to the White House
by Aish.com staff Jacob Lew is appointed White House Chief of Staff. Is that good for the Jews?
First it was Joe Lieberman gaining notoriety as an Orthodox Jew running (unsuccessfully) for Vice President in 2000. Now comes the announcement of Jacob Lew being appointed by President Obama to serve in the powerful position of White House Chief of Staff.
Lew and his wife Ruth have a home in the...
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“Baruch Hashem!!! We had a baby girl in Jerusalem yesterday!!!”
– Benyamin Clayman
December 2011
7 posts
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Daf Yomi Notes →
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Animated Gemara →
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Watch
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Israel Inside
by Tanya Strusberg
A new documentary on how Israel’s spirit and resilience brought them to the forefront of world innovation.
These days it can be pretty hard to find something positive about Israel in the media. In fact, the outlook is pretty bleak. There seems to be no limit to the amount of bashing Israel receives. On top of that, Jewish students on campuses across the country...
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November 2011
3 posts
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A Blanket of Trust
by Howard Schultz
The chairman of Starbucks learns about life from Rabbi Nosson Tzvi Finkel, zt”l.
Nov. 8, 2011 - The Jewish world is plunged into mourning with the untimely passing of Rabbi Nosson Tzvi Finkel, the Rosh Yeshiva of Mir in Jerusalem.
I grew up in federally subsidized housing in Brooklyn. I was part of a generation of families that dreamed about the American dream. My...
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Libya
by Eliezer Schulman and Michal Ish-Shalom
After working with Libyan rebels, David Gerbi faced an angry mob at the ancient synagogue in Tripoli.
Dr. David Gerbi, a Libyan-born, observant psychologist living in Italy, spent the summer in a Libyan rebel encampment, joining the revolutionary forces and providing them psychiatric care. But their gratitude didn’t last for long. He was nearly...
October 2011
7 posts
4 tags
Celebrating Diversity
By Yaakov Menken, on October 28th, 2011
I was also at a Shiva this week — a member of our community lost his brother, who lived in Israel, after a long illness. Their family is from Iraq, and praying in his home offered the opportunity to both hear the prayers and learn more about the minhagim, customs, of the Sepharadim, Middle-Eastern Jewry.
Baltimore may not be Brooklyn, but there are...
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Life's Most Important App
by Sara Yoheved Rigler
Appreciating more with less.
The text messages of a dying man reveal a lot about who he was. Larry Melzer, 37, was losing his 17-month battle with leukemia. Lying in a bed in an Israeli hospital, suffering from viral pneumonia after a bone marrow transplant, Larry was on a respirator. His four little daughters were at home in Jerusalem. Larry’s devoted wife Jen was...
“The old witticism says that the enigmatic animal specie called Kvi (Koi) stands...”
– Revach.net
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“The retrospective glance reveals that my undignified past and willful...”
– Read more: http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2011/10/07/rewriting-the-past/#ixzz1aOjXNu8M Under Creative Commons License: Attribution
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“Shana Tova!”
September 2011
6 posts
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Why Jews Don't Believe In Jesus
by Rabbi Shraga Simmons
For 2,000 years Jews have rejected the Christian idea of Jesus as messiah. Why?
One of the most common questions we receive at Aish.com is: “Why don’t Jews believe in Jesus?” Let’s understand why ― not in order to disparage other religions, but rather to clarify the Jewish position.
Jews do not accept Jesus as the messiah because:
Jesus did...
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“Going to Synagogue on Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur should not feel like the...”
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To Bris or Not to Bris
by Lea Goldman
For the last few months of my pregnancy I spent more time agonizing about the bris than about labor itself.
From the outset, I knew I was carrying a boy. I can’t quite explain how, whether it was maternal instinct, woman’s intuition or just a wild guess. But when the sonogram confirmed this fact during my 20th week of pregnancy, I smiled one of those smiles that engulfs the...
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“I love Hashem, I love Hashem, I LOVE HASHEM!!!”
August 2011
8 posts
4 tags
I Too Am Royalty
by Yvette Alt Miller
As a child I longed for the majestic. Watching the royal wedding, I realized I found it.
On April 29, 2011, I joined two billion people worldwide in watching Prince William wed Kate Middleton. I was so excited, I kept waking up to see if it was time for their ceremony.
It all brought back memories for me of the wedding of the groom’s parents, Prince Charles and...
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Do I Have to Eat Meat on Shabbat?
By Moshe Goldman
Question:
I keep hearing and reading various sources stating that it is absolute halacha that one must eat meat on Shabbat. Is this actual halacha or just a custom (albeit a very widespread one), and what is the reasoning behind the law/custom?
The reason I ask is that my wife and I are vegetarian. I have been vegetarian since I was a small child, because I simply do not...
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Must Watch on the Holocaust →
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Are Business Ethics an Oxymoron?
by Rabbi Benjamin Blech
Our daily business ethics speak far louder than the words we utter in synagogue.
Looking at the headlines of the past few years – Bernie Madoff, Enron, the subprime mortgage scandal and a host of other examples – we get the feeling that ethical practices play no role in that world dedicated solely to the goal of maximizing profits.
How remarkable then to discover...
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“As far as I know, to the furthest extent of my memory, I never harmed anyone,...”
– Rabbi Moshe Feinstein
July 2011
7 posts
Great Website for Torah →
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“One should not think about others and their matters unless it is for the purpose...”
– Toras Rabbi Yisrael Salanter - section Darkei HaAvodah
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ABCs of Tisha B'Av & the Three Weeks
by Rabbi Shraga Simmons
The Jewish national period of mourning.
The “Three Weeks” between the 17th of Tammuz and the Tisha B’Av have historically been days of misfortune and calamity for the Jewish people. During this time, both the First and Second Temples were destroyed, amongst other tragedies.
These days are referred to as the period “within the...
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“It is against their own insoluble problem of being human that the dull and base...”
– Herman Rauschning
“Energy is the basis of everything. Every Jew, no matter how insignificant, is...”
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe German dramatist, novelist and poet (1749 - 1832)