יום שבת, כ״ו תמוז תשפ״וSaturday, July 11, 2026
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Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb is the Executive Vice President, Emeritus of the Orthodox Union. He is the author of Person in the Parasha: Discovering the Human Element In the Weekly Torah Portion, co-published by OU Press and Maggid Books. For more information, visit www.ou.org/oupress/product/the-person-in-the-parasha/. For other articles and essays by Rabbi Weinreb, visit www.ou.org/torah/parsha-series/rabbi-weinreb-on-parsha.
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The impact he had upon spreading Torah study – thereby bringing Jews closer to G-d and their faith – cannot be overstated.
Why are our concerns during the rest of the year limited to ourselves and our close family, to our own narrow social group and to our immediate geographical environment?
Whenever I see people, of whatever religion or background, who are joyfully coming together after a long separation, I feel spellbound, and I must stand by and witness that pure innocent joy as long as I can.
Rabbi Yehuda responded, "If you didn't know him personally, it is impossible for you to fully appreciate his loss." I heartily agreed.
This past autumn the Pew Research Center’s Religion and Public Life Project released the findings of its survey of American Jews. “A Portrait of Jewish Americans” immediately won the attention of a good number of American Jews and became the focus of considerable media coverage.
Several weeks ago my wife, Chavi, and I attended the sad funeral of Mrs. Martha Melohn a”h. Besides being a dear friend of Chavi’s, Mrs. Melohn was the matriarch of a very well-known philanthropic family. This is not the place for a full-fledged eulogy of this remarkable woman, but I begin this article with reflections on a conversation I had with her just several months before her unfortunate demise.
There certainly are many reasons to look forward to Purim. It is a time of feasting, joy, and merriment. We celebrate an important victory over our enemies, which was a precedent for many other such victories over the course of our history. We read one of the most moving stories in our entire tradition, and we have good fun while we’re doing it.
July 10, 2026 
