Parshat Mattot concludes the saga started in Parshat Balak with the Jews’ slaying of the Midianites in revenge for their evil plan of trying to
We all have moments when we feel butterflies in our stomach, but for these past few weeks those moments have seemed endless. First there was
During the month of Av, the three-week mourning period that we began observing this week is intensified, culminating in our national day of mourning: Tisha
Earlier today, on Jerusalem’s promenade overlooking the old city, I officiated at the bar mitzvah of Noah Kaye, a lovely young boy from NYC whom
I have been so moved by the events over the last two weeks in Israel. I have been, for some reason, more affected by this
Over the past 18 days, most, if not all large Jewish group meetings or organizations in the area have begun or ended proceedings with tehillim
Bradley Scott’s shout-out to the White House, silent so far about the kidnapping of three Israeli youth this week, could also be directed at an
Back in the mid-’70s there was a groundbreaking female superhero on Saturday morning TV called Isis. An American high school science teacher found a magic
We are not the first Jews to live with enormous uncertainty about the future. Uncertainty, however, can be both paralyzing and liberating. When the Jewish
Although Israel has been at the heart of day-school curricula for decades, we have known little about how schools teach and students learn about Israel—at
(originally printed in the Times of Israel, reprinted with permission of the author) Oh, I wish I could write a love story about my people,
The Iranian regime’s new enemy, it seems, is Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi. Iran’s mullahs apparently fear Sisi’s secular stance against Islamist movements, and see
