יום רביעי, ט׳ תמוז תשפ״וWednesday, June 24, 2026
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Elliot Resnick, Ph.D., served as chief editor of The Jewish Press from 2018-21. He is the author of six books and the editor of four more including, most recently, The Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch Dictionary. These books, and his new online course, “Ten Tips to Drastically Improve Your Writing,” are available on his website, www.BrennBooks.com. He was a student in Rabbi Kaufman’s class from 1995-96.
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I had a passion for reading and read anything from The Hardy Boys to any book I could get my hands on.
What a lot of people don’t know, though, is that Israel used a very sophisticated cyber weapon to basically blind Syrian radar systems [during its aerial raid on the facility].
We’re a halachic publisher. But in our hashkafa, Zionism is important, the state of Israel is important, and engaging the world is important.
I sense more and more people with strong Torah background who are bothered by questions of the mission of the Jew and the Torah's relationship to the larger world.
Humor should not be used to make fun of people. We have to laugh with people, not against them.
I think the rollout of Trump’s first executive order on immigration was amateur. But the spirit of the order was correct.
My mother told us when we were growing up that we have to be like Yosef in Mitzrayim. Being Jewish and living a Jewish life was fundamental.
I was blessed with a mother who was an avid reader, and she set a magnificent example of love of reading and love of learning.
Obligation is a strong word. There are many medical procedures that are life-saving in nature that are not obligatory if there’s even a small risk involved.
My family was very much involved with Eretz Yisrael. During the 1940s when the Underground was trying to throw out the British, my father was one of the heads of the Revisionists.
Most powerful people in Hollywood are the directors, and the directors have never liked others filtering their work. So the hands of the people inside the studio are tied.
Since age eight or nine, I have read non-fiction almost exclusively, beginning with presidential biographies.
The idea for the book came from Filreis who turned to art in 2005 after a bout with cancer.
My great-great-grandparents were very upset that the Rebbe told them to go to treifa America.
People who start the history in 1948 encounter a country that is fundamentally in conflict and are not exposed at all to the yearnings of the Jewish people to restore themselves to their ancestral homeland.
The biggest terrorist attack in the United States before the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing was an anarchist bombing of Wall Street by Italian anarchists in 1920, in which dozens of people were killed.
The important point here is that the Muslim Brotherhood is the only organization of this kind in Egypt.
What’s striking is there’s a pattern that repeats itself over and over again of believing that if the United States distances itself from Israel, it’s going to get some kind of strategic benefit.
If leftist activists really cared about black Americans, Mac Donald argues, they would champion the police.
Although six decades have since passed, the Kastner Affair remains highly controversial.
I believe the whole range og 19th century Russian literature affected me deeply.
There were all kinds – litvish, chassidish, the daughters of roshei yeshiva and girls who weren’t even shomer Shabbos. Rebbetzin Kaplan took them all in
I couldn’t believe poverty was so bad that people had to lick the road just to get a little bit of food.
In addition to lobbying the UN, they have also been challenging Israel’s government to punish Hamas for holding their son’s body hostage.
I have closde to 10,000 books, covering all kinds of things in Jewish studies.
The question was: Would you support a two-state solution if it meant the conflict was completely over and no more claims could be made?
I look to my parents and rebbeim as my primary infulences. And I think that's how it should be.
The story of bookstores in the U.S. in general – not just Jewish bookstores – is a pretty bad one.
I’m not arguing against common ancestry or some form of descent with modification. What I’m saying is that accidental processes cannot possibly have invented these things.
Luz never married. “When she died,” Dwork said, “her nephew was going through her apartment, sorting out her effects, and he found a suitcase of these letters.
As a teen, I found essays by people like William F. Buckley Jr. and Lewis Thomas enthralling.
But my father had developed an interest in Judaism and felt it was disloyal to abandon the Jewish people in a time of danger, so he stayed in Israel.
What books would you recommend to someone seeking intellectual ammunition for his belief in 1) the existence of G-d? and 2) the divinity of the Bible?
My father went to a school in a neighborhood with no Jews and told my teacher, “My son is a sick boy who must relax two days a week – Saturday and Sunday.”
When she asked her if she remembered her quirky sentences, the student replied, “Are you kidding me? These sentences are going with me to the grave!”
Many people said it was going to look like vengeance.
I walked into his class thinking I knew how to write, and for our first essay he told us that two-run on sentences was grounds for immediate failure.
I actually originally wanted to become a conductor and studied classical piano and conducting at the Academy of Music of Tel Aviv.
Trump is a man who gets things done. He is a man who strives for excellence. Trump is a man who values greatness and seeks the same for his country.
That’s not the truth. Raoul Wallenberg’s heroic deed was the huge organization he managed to build to help Hungarian Jews.
Titled “The Ghost Warriors: Inside Israel’s Undercover War Against Suicide Terrorism” (Berkley Caliber), the book focuses on Yamas, the undercover unit of Israel’s National Police Border Guard.
The Jewish people is a community of readers held together by a text.
The political atmosphere in Bavaria at this time was sympathetic to the direction Hitler was going, and his was just one of many far-right movements at the time.
The idea that the world should not have one world government but rather should be divided into nation states is a biblical idea.
So the personality of the leader is really a moot question.
I consumed anything that came my way.
It demonstrated to me that anti-Semitism wasn’t just a notion, it was a reality;
“We were able to bring together the Jewish community, regardless of level of observance,”
I was an avid reader and a regular patron of Baltimore's main library.
Perhaps his most impressive trait – one I did not fully appreciate before reading Mrs. Kahane’s work – is the tirelessness with which he worked for his goals.
When you write an English song, though, you’re really thinking of a theme or a message and the song almost becomes secondary.
I would suggest they read about Jewish history.
At one point, Jewish leaders warned Bergson that a particular newspaper ad he was planning was so strongly worded that it might cause pogroms.
Probably the biggest mistake the terrorists made was to release some of the hostages, because when they got back to France they were debriefed by Mossad operatives.
The very first Jewish author I ever came across was Sadie Weilerstein.
The main source of anti-Semitism in this country is the left and its Muslim allies.
But I think the turning point was really Reagan. Since that time, I don’t think you find this anti-Semitic undertone.
Litvinoff said the shul is just one project among several that he has promoted on behalf of observant Jews.
What do you mean by “don’t know how to daven”? Ninety-nine percent of the people don’t know the melodies. They don’t know how to set the text together.
“Rachel has cried enough,” Stern said. “Now it’s time to give her something to smile about.”
Blogs are history. They still exist, but they are largely irrelevant
Maybe for a young couple to go so far away to be by ourselves and to open up to the world of China, Japan, Burma, and India would be an interesting honeymoon.
There’s a wide spectrum of behavior and beliefs among people, and people don’t always line up 100 percent the way other people expect them to.
It’s kind of a sad thing that society dismisses the extraordinary work they do. I mean, they put their lives on the line every day to protect strangers.
Rabbi Mayer Schiller is a Skver-Rachmistrivka chassid with a passion for the ideology of Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch. Born to a non-observant family, Rabbi Schiller became a baal teshuvah in seventh grade after he and two friends embarked on an unusual experiment: to live as Orthodox Jews for a month. He is the author of […]
How do you account for Jews who join Israel’s enemies in denouncing and boycotting the Jewish state?
I am among those who maintain that artistic expression that comes from inspiration is very valuable.
Aside from my own 485-page tome on the subject, Red Army, I think Jamie Glazov did an excellent job at framing things in United in Hate: The Left's Romance with Tyranny and Terror.
I think the melodies in our religious services have a haunting sound to them that just permeates your guts and gets into your soul. If you have any musical inclination, I think they inspire you to compose.
In his day, Rav Kook was the greatest writer of haskamot and pretty much everyone in the Lithuanian Torah world wanted his approbation.
But on the human level, public protest played a very central role. And that’s not my position – it’s the position of historians who are experts in this area.
When words lose meaning, the world becomes an Orwellian dystopia; a veritable Tower of Babel
My best book is one that hasn't been published yet.
Sometimes it takes a catastrophe like 9/11 to wake Americans up.
Israel is not the only issue that has drawn Jews closer to conservative Christians in recent decades. The culture wars have played a significant role as well.
What books might people be surprised to find on your bookshelves?
Jews are an anxious group – understandably, given the millennia of persecution – and want to have no trouble.
Why do Jews, then, sometimes feel more intensely about Polish anti-Semitism than they do about German anti-Semitism?
Mitchell Bard is nothing if not prolific. He has written and edited 23 books, including “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Middle East” and “The Arab Lobby: The Invisible Alliance That Undermines America’s Interests in the Middle East.” Bard, who has a Ph.D. in political science from UCLA, is also the executive director of both the […]
You have to understand that Ukraine was really a very, very Jewish place for many years.
What I think is going on here is the Midrash is making a comment about Rut’s love for Naomi being some sort of reflection of how we have to love God.
I can tell you that Cablevision has been astonished at how high we rank.
HarperCollins’s omission was especially egregious because it is a major general and educational publisher.
I said to myself, “This story has got to be told. We’re losing this generation of World War II and if we don’t listen to them now, we’ve lost it.”
Nouril concluded he had no choice: He had to become more observant.
I was very pro-Israel, I was very proud of being Jewish, and I was living in New York at the time as a single man in my 20s and I was just looking for a little bit more.
A school voucher means the state is giving you a voucher to send your kid to whatever school you want. That might be problematic as far church-state issues are concerned.
It’s not an admiration. It is simply a kind of journalist fascination. It stands out, it’s different from more traditional Orthodoxy.
To many Orthodox Jews the issue is "Permitted & Prohibited;” "Right & Wrong" barely considered,
You can’t say “Jewish French,” “Jewish British,” “Jewish Italian.” They are “French Jews,” “British Jews,” and “Italian Jews” – because they’re seen as Jews first and residents or citizens of their countries second.
Another thing they have been covering up is the nature of the building that was attacked. To this day people refer to it as a consulate or an embassy, but it wasn’t.
The reality is that civility is less important than clarity, and right now only very few people on the Left are interested in having a civil conversation about the merits of particular policy solutions.
Rabinovich is the author of several popular books on Israel’s wars, including The Battle for Jerusalem, The Yom Kippur War, and The Boats of Cherbourg.
I think Seth Lipsky is amazing, but it just drives home the point that newspapers have a lot of moving parts.
Can teenagers seriously be expected to behave properly when they are surrounded by so much suggestive material? Is it fair to expose them (and ourselves) to so much temptation and then tell them, “Just say no”?
If you remember, in 2006, a Jewish kid in Paris, Ilan Halimi, was abducted, beaten, and held hostage for three weeks... These are the kinds of people attending these Gaza solidarity rallies.
King Solomon said it long ago: “Cast your bread upon the waters” because you don’t know when you’ll hit something. Our job is to do.
Formerly an attorney at the prestigious law firm Proskauer Rose for 40 years – six of those years as its chairman – Fagin holds degrees from both Columbia and Harvard Universities. He retired in 2013 to devote more time to the Jewish community.
The fact that you’re tired doesn’t free you from obligations.
The message is that Zionism, which used to be great, is today very institutionalized and [consists of a] bunch of people who are just squabbling over titles and budgets.
June 19, 2026 
