The death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis cop Derek Chauvin, who dug his knee into Floyd’s neck, feels all too familiar. Like Eric Garner in New York, Floyd cried out, “I can’t breathe.” As with Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, riots ensued. Floyd’s death also occurred not far from where an unarmed Philando

It was a beautiful conclusion to a great Torah learning session. It seemed as if Hashem said, “The rabbi did his part, the students did theirs, and now I will participate as well.”

Amid a deep dive into Sefer Daniel with my Torah Academy of Bergen County students, we focused on Chanania, Mishael and

Parshat Naso

“The Man Who Could Be King” would make a fitting title for the story of Shimshon HaGibor, a story that begins in the 13th perek of Shoftim, the haftarah for this week. Using the laws of the nazir that are found in our parsha as the connective thread, Chazal chose the story of the birth

I like to think I’m a sensitive person. When I hear someone is having trouble it bothers me. When I see an ambulance I say some Tehillim and I try to daven for others in my Shemoneh Esrei. I’m not alone. Klal Yisrael is known for its ability to unite and empathize with each other.

So many times

I thought it would be interesting to tell the story of how the first Dead Sea scrolls came to light. I am basing this on a summary in a book by Hershel Shanks, “The Mystery and Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls” (1998). (There are surely accounts by others with slightly different details.) I will tell the story in two separate

On an early summer Sunday morning in 1972, George Blank attended a lecture given by a young, red-headed rabbi named Adin Steinsaltz at Temple Shalom, a Conservative congregation in Bridgewater, New Jersey. In 2004, and again in 2008, MD&DI (Medical Device and Diagnostic Industry) magazine identified George as one of the 100 most notable

I recall a very special, although at the time nerve-wracking, interaction I had with Rabbi Lamm, zt”l. I was the gabbai of the Rubin Shul Shabbat minyan. I had worked very hard to get Rabbi Lamm to join us one Shabbat morning instead of going to YU’s main beit midrash as he typically did on the occasions he spent Shabbat at YU.