יום שישי, י״ח תמוז תשפ״וFriday, July 3, 2026
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Tzvi Fishman was awarded the Israel Ministry of Education Prize for Creativity and Jewish Culture for his novel "Tevye in the Promised Land." A wide selection of his books are available at Amazon. His recent movie "Stories of Rebbe Nachman" The DVD of the movie is available online.
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By Tzvi Fishman
The next chapter of the award-winning novel.
By Tzvi Fishman
The next chapter of the award-winning novel.
By Tzvi Fishman
One late afternoon when Tevye returned to his tent after a back-breaking day in the winery, a letter was waiting from Baylke. Sure enough, she had been in touch with Golda’s distant cousin in Chicago, and he had forwarded Tevye’s letter to her in New York. She had been thrilled […]
By Tzvi Fishman
The next chapter of the award-winning novel.
By Tzvi Fishman
What was a man, Tevye thought, that one moment he could be so filled with power and seemingly invincible force, and the next moment a motionless pile of flesh?
By Tzvi Fishman
The next chapter in the award winning novel.
By Tzvi Fishman
When word arrived that Baron Edmond Rothschild was coming for a visit, with none other than the famous Dr. Chaim Weizmann, the colony turned into a frantic beehive of activity.
By Tzvi Fishman
Overnight, Tevye's new cottage became a warm, haimisher home...
By Tzvi Fishman
Both of Elisha's two grown daughters were golden-skinned, beautiful, devoutly religious, and nearly half Tevye's age. The eldest daughter, Carmel, was naturally the first choice of the parents, but Elisha told Tevye he could marry whomever he picked. Embarrassed by the whole distressing business, and wanting the matter to be concluded as discreetly as […]
By Tzvi Fishman
My friends, if you want to save your souls, don’t watch the Oscars. If you want to be a holy Jew, you have to work on it.
By Tzvi Fishman
An excerpt from this week's chapter of Tevye in the Promised Land.
By Tzvi Fishman
Like the lions in Rabbi Kook’s poem, may we also find the longing for freedom.
By Tzvi Fishman
On the arranged date, the Jews set out to survey the land which their Arab neighbors wanted to sell. The Muktar Abdulla graciously sent them a guide who showed them the way through the mountains to his village. Traveling on horseback, the journey up and down the hillsides and valleys took them two […]
By Tzvi Fishman
After all, who has time to sit in the dark and watch narishkeit? We have a country to build.
By Tzvi Fishman
The Torah commands, 'Honor thy father and thy mother, in order that thy days be long upon the Land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.'
By Tzvi Fishman
If we can’t forcibly draft Diaspora Jews, then it’s up to them to enlist on their own.
By Tzvi Fishman
The Rabbis of the religious Zionist community serve in the army; why shouldn’t Haredi Rabbis also be brave examples for their students?
By Tzvi Fishman
The Jewish Colony Association had chosen the mountainous location not for its suitability as farmland, but because of its price. When more and more Jews began immigrating to Palestine, the Turkish government began doubling and tripling the cost of the land until parcels were often ten times more expensive than farmland in Europe. The Baron […]
By Tzvi Fishman
To all my blogger colleagues in America: if you want to complain about things in Israel, at least come live here, and play your part in the building.
By Tzvi Fishman
Without Eretz Yisrael, the Torah is a shrunken, truncated, mini-version of the complete Torah of Eretz Yisrael.
By Tzvi Fishman
The previous two redemptions began when the Jews were very deficient in mitzvah observance.
By Tzvi Fishman
“How can we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?” King David asks. The answer is that we can’t.
By Tzvi Fishman
All of Tevye's life, it seemed like he was always saying good-bye. Back in the old country, what now seemed like lifetimes ago, his Hodel had left him for Perchik. Then Hava had run off with her gentile, and Shprintza had drowned. Then the heart and soul of his being, his devoted wife, Golda, had […]
By Tzvi Fishman
By sitting in a Netanyahu-led government the Jewish Home would be an accomplice to the theft of the Land of Israel.
By Tzvi Fishman
The novel, Tevye in the Promised Land, won the Israel Ministry of Education Award for Creativity and Jewish Culture.
By Tzvi Fishman
Don’t cast your vote for a party that condemns Torah values and honest and dedicated people who have led the way in the education of our youth and the settlement of Eretz Yisrael.
By Tzvi Fishman
Rashi informs us that 80 percent of the Jews in Egypt were stricken to death during the plague of darkness because they didn’t want to leave the cesspools of Egypt and go to the Land flowing with milk and honey.
By Tzvi Fishman
Not only was Tevye's family going to be together, they were going to be rich! The Baron's gift of 5000 francs would make them the new aristocrats of Palestine. But Tevye's daydreaming didn't last long. When he heard that Nachman was planning on returning the money, Tevye nearly fell out of the wagon. "I […]
By Tzvi Fishman
The meaning of the Exodus is that Hashem chose the Jewish people to be His special Holy nation.
By Tzvi Fishman
The darkness of materialism is so great, who can fight against it?
By Tzvi Fishman
We don’t want to rule over the goyim. We are to be their teachers, that’s all.
By Tzvi Fishman
The only thing preventing it from becoming a reality is the tragic fact that so many Orthodox Jews prefer living in the Diaspora.
By Tzvi Fishman
Our sages teach it was the women of Israel that saved the nation from Egypt.
By Tzvi Fishman
A discussion of various practices related to the shovavim period.
By Tzvi Fishman
Mount Sinai was to be a temporary stopover to pick up the Torah, but the goal of the Exodus was to bring the Jews to Israel.
By Tzvi Fishman
It’s time for the Jews of America to get out of the country with their money while they can.
By Tzvi Fishman
According to Kabbalah, the period of "Shovavim" is especially conducive to rectifying sexual transgressions.
By Tzvi Fishman
The history of January 1st should make Jews think twice before they celebrate New Year’s and take part in its heathen festivities.
By Tzvi Fishman
In galut, wee become possessed by the foreign lands and cultures where we live.
By Tzvi Fishman
If you think that living in a Xtrian land doesn’t affect you at all, it’s because your brain has been so saturated with dreams of white Christmases.
By Tzvi Fishman
Each individual Jew should put his life in line with the goal of Clal Israel and not just live a private, ritual Judaism, practicing personal precepts, stripped of our national essence.
By Tzvi Fishman
Jewish life changes when we are in Galut. Not only does our Clalli soul disappear, but every detail of our life is affected.
By Tzvi Fishman
Thriving and prospering, materially and even spiritually in galut, with an abundance of Torah learning and observance, is nevertheless defined by the Torah, our Prophets and Sages, as death.
By Tzvi Fishman
By and large, American Jews are not really waiting for Mashiach to come.
By Tzvi Fishman
This is the Land of Miracles, where our Redemption is unfolding today.
By Tzvi Fishman
Our Sages teach that when Chanukah comes around, we are to thank Hashem, not only for the miracles that He performed for us in Israel long ago, but also for the miracles which He performs for us today. So, with your permission, I want to take this opportunity to thank Hashem for all of the […]
By Tzvi Fishman
My rendition of John Lennon's "Imagine."
By Tzvi Fishman
We become a “light to the nations” precisely when we are living together in Eretz Yisrael.
By Tzvi Fishman
Recognizing the terrible danger of unsupervised Internet viewing has extra significance now, at the time of Hanukah.
By Tzvi Fishman
The modern day Hellenists are the Jews of the Diaspora who have the ability to move to Israel, but prefer to identify with a foreign country and foreign culture.
By Tzvi Fishman
“It wasn’t the Greeks whom the Israelis conquered. They were Palestine refugees from Syria."
By Tzvi Fishman
Emunah, the very heart of the Torah, teaches us what God and the Nation of Israel are all about.
By Tzvi Fishman
While my writing may be blunt and painful to some, I don’t blame the Jews in the Diaspora for their misunderstanding of what the Torah is really all about.
By Tzvi Fishman
Pure Judaism? Without the Land of Israel? Sorry, but that isn’t Judaism. It’s a new religion.
By Tzvi Fishman
The journey from Zichron Yaacov to Jaffa took almost three days. For Tevye, it was a chance to see another part of the Land of Israel, the sandy, swamp-infested coastline bordering the Mediterranean Sea. Most of the landscape was barren, with only an occasional settlement along the way. The colonies of Hadera, Kfar Saba, and […]
By Tzvi Fishman
Diaspora Jewry should examine their role in Israel's failures to combat Palestinian moves at the UN.
By Tzvi Fishman
Just so the jolly little elves and white-bearded Santas don’t fool you, it pays to recall the truth about Christianity.
By Tzvi Fishman
Hamas's celebrations of victory are based on fantasy and lies, and their joy won’t last when we hit them ten times as hard the next time.
By Tzvi Fishman
Dear Son, Do not be confused. Know who the enemy is. With all the meaningless talk of peace agreements and cease fires, the satanic enemy continues to fire rockets of destruction and blow up buses filled with innocent civilians. In the same breath, they demand that Israel end the assassination of its leaders, as a […]
By Tzvi Fishman
We learned in Lebanon that we can’t defeat the enemy with our Air Force alone. What’s the point of a truce that will last for three weeks until Hamas fires more rockets at Israel?
By Tzvi Fishman
Some people like the smell of napalm in the morning, but I love the smell of missiles.
By Tzvi Fishman
This past year, the government of Syria has slaughtered 50,000 truly innocent civilians. Does the world give a damn? No.
By Tzvi Fishman
So know that I am with you. So is your mother. The whole Shabbat, she waited for the moment she could turn on the radio to learn what was happening.
By Tzvi Fishman
With the birth of Hodel's baby, the time had come for Tevye to journey onward. Family was a matter of tantamount importance, but a Jew had an even higher allegiance to God. Had not the Almighty warned that life in the Holy Land must be lived according to the commandments of the Torah? That meant observing the laws of the Sabbath and the holidays, eating kosher food, donning tallit and tefillin, guarding the treasures of marital purity, and observing all of the six-hundred and thirteen commandments – most of which were flagrantly ignored by the young pioneers on the kibbutz.
By Tzvi Fishman
What do you say to your son as he waits on the outskirts of Gaza? This is the message that I sent him.
By Tzvi Fishman
The “Amud HaAnan” Operation which Tzahal has now undertaken is intended to protect our beleaguered citizens in the south. But it is much more than that.
By Tzvi Fishman
Strolling around Tel Aviv and seeing how the words of our Prophets have come to pass in our generation, is as much of a spiritual experience as spending a day in the holy city of Tzfat.
By Tzvi Fishman
Last week, I drove with my wife toward the coastline to do a little seaside touring. As we were driving there, she mentioned that someone in her family was going for a vacation to Austria. “Austria?” I blurted, nearly losing control of the wheel. “Why would any Jew in Israel want to go to Austria?”
By Tzvi Fishman
Before Shabbat, the Heavens opened with a symphony of thunder and lightning, and the great blessing of rain washed over the Land of Israel in answer to our prayers. Like I do every year with the very first rain, I hurried outside and danced in joy, laughing happily as the raindrops splashed on my face.
By Tzvi Fishman
We spent Shabbat in Ashkelon, visiting my wife’s parents. On Motzei Shabbat, my wife stayed in Ashkelon (in the red glare of the rockets fired from Gaza) so that she could take her mother for a medical treatment in the morning. I drove back to Yerushalayim with my children. Along the way, we passed a stretch of fertile farmland. The heavenly rains that had fallen during Shabbat seemed to have awakened the earth, and the pungent aroma of fresh cow manure wafted into the car. My younger boys started gagging and making jokes, the way children do about such things.
By Tzvi Fishman
The indefatigable woodchopper, Goliath, provided the posts and slats for the fence which the settlers began erecting around the kibbutz. Ben Zion adamantly opposed the idea, claiming a fence would turn the settlement into a ghetto and curtail any further expansion.
By Tzvi Fishman
As part of our effort to attract our beloved, Diaspora readers with honey, rather than to smash them repeatedly over their heads - in the next few blogs, we will travel the length and breadth of Eretz Yisrael, just like our forefather Avraham did in obeying God’s command, “Arise, walk about the Land through its length and breadth! For to you I will give it!”
By Tzvi Fishman
For many Israelis, the Presidential election in America had a special urgency because of the increasing nuclear threat from Iran, and the hope that Romney would take a more militant stance than Obama. I wrote a short story on the tragedy of looking to America for our salvation, which appears in my award-winner collection of short stories, “Days of Mashiach,” which was translated and published in France this year by a non-Jewish publisher, with reviewers comparing me to Voltaire and the famous fable writer, Jean de la Fontaine. Big deal. Anyway, enjoy the story, and for readers who value true Jewish literature, I invite you to check out some of my other books at Amazon.
By Tzvi Fishman
I know that I promised to lay the sledgehammer aside for awhile, but a few of yesterday’s news items made me batty. In one of them, the UJA-Federation of New York announced it was earmarking ten million dollars in emergency hurricane relief to its local network agencies and synagogues. Chevre! Chaval al hakesev!
By Tzvi Fishman
A few readers have written me lately, saying that my blogs are too hard-hitting, and that I would have better results with honey than with smashing people over the head with a sledgehammer. I am not totally convinced
By Tzvi Fishman
Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda HaKohen Kook said it was like a girl who was set up on a shidduch with a guy whom she knew wasn’t for her. But she didn’t want to embarrass him. So she dressed up in dirty, smelly garments so that he would feel turned off. While he thought that he was rejecting her, in truth, she was rejecting him... Surely, aliyah is the most difficult and challenging mitzvah – the true test of a Jew’s faith in God. But hundreds of thousands of new olim have made it, and so can you.
By Tzvi Fishman
Years have passed since Rabbi Kahane penned this essay, but it still rings sadly true today. Rabbi Kahane was known for saying uncomfortable things that comfortable Jews didn’t want to hear. In honor of his yahrtzeit, here’s another one of his brilliant and illuminating writings, which was published almost 25 years ago in The Jewish Press.
By Tzvi Fishman
This Shabbat marks the yahrtzeit of Rabbi Meir Kahane, may Hashem avenge his murder. To honor his memory, our next two blogs will feature essays he wrote for The Jewish Press, which appear in the incomparably thought-provoking collection of his articles, “Beyond Words.” May his memory be for a blessing.
By Tzvi Fishman
The law prohibiting our participation in gentile holidays and customs comes to protect our special Jewish holiness and cultural distinction.
By Tzvi Fishman
Two Torah scholars were sent from Israel to Babylon. Upon their arrival, they took part in official ceremonies and didn’t reveal the purpose of their visit. They were received with great honor. Gradually, they started to vent their opposition. Finally, they entered a crowded assembly and said to the Jews of Babylon, “Behold, you are a great congregation. You can be independent. You don’t need Eretz Yisrael. You don’t need Mount Moriah.” Their sarcasm was purposely stinging in order to shock the Babylonian Jews. “And you’ve also got Rabbi Ahia here. Let Ahia build an altar, and let Haninah play on a harp. But know that if you detach yourselves from the centrality of Eretz Yisrael, you have no portion in the God of Israel!”
By Tzvi Fishman
After all, in Avraham’s time, there were savage Canaanites living in Eretz Yisrael. And there weren’t any kosher supermarkets back then, nor religious neighborhoods, nor Jewish Day Schools and yeshivot for the kids. In fact, there weren’t any Jews living there at all. Avraham would be the first. Who needed the hassle? It made a lot more sense to stay where he was, in Ur America, where everyone knew him, enjoying the good life with the goyim, wait for Moshiach, and pretend, via the Internet, that he was actually involved in building the Jewish State.
By Tzvi Fishman
The yartzeit of our Matriarch, Rachel, falls this year on Shabbat. Every year, more and more people gather at Rachel’s Tomb to pay respects to the Matriarch who is known as Rachel Emanu - Rachel Our Mother. Thousands of pilgrims will travel there today and tomorrow from all over the country, and perhaps 200,000 more will make the annual pilgrimage the day after Shabbat, every type of Jew there is, religious and non-religious, Haredim, Hasidim, and Dati Leumi, men, women, and children, busload after busload after busload, from far and near, waiting long hours for their turn to enter the small but beautifully renovated tomb near Betlechem on the way to Efrata .
By Tzvi Fishman
Did you have trouble reading the Hebrew? That’s exactly my point. Some readers say that I’m a crazy fanatic when I say that Diaspora Jews suffer from schizophrenia when it comes to their Jewish identity. For example, even though they are Jewish, many don’t know more than a few simple words in Hebrew. After all, Hebrew is the language of the Jewish People, not English, or German, or Russian, or Yiddish.
By Tzvi Fishman
The emergency bell clanged throughout the valley of the Shoshana kibbutz. Workers who were building the first stone edifice on the settlement put down their chisels and masonry tools. Field hands set aside their scythes and their sickles and started back toward the compound of mud and wood dwellings. Within minutes, all of the settlers sat crowded together on the benches in the dining hall. With great indignation, Ben Zion related how the Arabs had ambushed them at the well and stolen his horse and two rifles. He demanded that a small force be organized immediately and set off in retaliation.
By Tzvi Fishman
Dear Rabbi: With elections approaching in Israel, I am searching for a religious political party for which to vote. When I think about voting for Shas, I remember their support for Oslo, the surrender of parts of Eretz Yisrael, giving rifles to our enemies, and the terrible sea of Jewish blood that was spilled after the Oslo Accords were signed. That is not the Torah I am searching to find.
By Tzvi Fishman
It seems that the fad at The Jewish Press these days is for contributing writers to declare that Sarah Silverman’s trashy routine is a Chillul Hashem. That may be true, but there’s a bigger Chillul Hashem than Sarah’s. The biggest Chillul Hashem is when Jews choose to live in Chicago, and Dallas, and Los Angeles, and Lakewood, and Brooklyn, when they could live in the Land of the Jews instead. But why listen to me? Let an old writer for the Jewish Press explain it to you – Rabbi Meir Kahane. I turn this blog over to him. Let’s hear what he had to say about Jewish life in the Diaspora.
By Tzvi Fishman
Give this week’s Torah portion, “Lech Lecha,” to an eight-year old to read, ask him where God wants the Jewish People to live and he will answer “the Land of Israel” right away. Give it to a gentile to read and ask him the same question. “The Land of Israel” he will answer without batting an eye. Give it to a Jew in the Diaspora and ask him the same question, and you’ll get a dozen different answers.
By Tzvi Fishman
To be perfectly honest, until yesterday, I had never heard of Sarah Silverman. I never saw a photo or a video of her; I never heard her jokes, nothing. While a great deal of junk American culture seeps into the Land of Israel, still we are sheltered from much of it, thank G-d, and I never heard her name mentioned in Israel at all. Until yesterday, when to my surprise and chagrin, I saw the immodest photo of her on the homepage of The Jewish Press, in her sleeveless top and her butt sticking into the air. Gevalt! Reading on about the silly fuss, I was further chagrined
By Tzvi Fishman
Almost everyone is familiar with the famous first Rashi on the Torah. He asks why does the Torah begin with the account of Creation? After all, since the Torah contains the commandments which Hashem gave to Am Yisrael, it should have begun the precept concerning Rosh Chodesh - the first commandment given to the Israelite Nation.
By Tzvi Fishman
If Eve had read www.jewishsexuality.com, she wouldn’t have followed after her eyes and got us all kicked out of the garden. If Adam had read jewishsexuality.com, he wouldn’t have eaten the “apple.” Today, we don’t have to make the same mistakes they did. We have the teachings of the Torah and the advice of the Sages to rely upon. While I won’t quote from the holy Zohar here, for people who enjoy the secrets of Torah, there’s a lot more to the snake than his pretty long tail.
By Tzvi Fishman
Tevye decided to stay in Shoshana until the birth of Hodel's baby, which was only a month away. He forbade Bat Sheva to speak to Ben Zion, and asked Goliath to keep his eyes open to make sure there were no rendezvous. Tevye, by nature, had a trusting, good-natured soul, and in the past, it […]
By Tzvi Fishman
We live a short walk from the Ramada Hotel in Jerusalem. Over the holidays, the hotel was packed with Diaspora Jews from all over the world, but now that the holidays are over, the lobby is pretty deserted. I can’t understand how a self-respecting Jew can leave the Land of Israel and go back to the Lilliputian Jewish life of Chicago, Los Angeles, Toronto, Melbourne, or Brooklyn after being in the Land of our Forefathers.
By Tzvi Fishman
Browsing through a news website, I noticed that the World Series is just two weeks away. I haven’t followed baseball for 30 years, ever since making aliyah. When I lived in America, and thought I was an American, I loved baseball, like everyone else. But baseball doesn’t interest me anymore. I don’t even know what teams are in the running this year. The World Series has absolutely nothing to do with the Redemption of Am Yisrael, so who cares? But maybe we can borrow a few metaphors from baseball to help America Jews understand that Judaism in the Diaspora is the Little Leagues.
By Tzvi Fishman
If the recent Sukkot overdose of Shabbat, followed by two days of Yom Tov, and another Shabbat followed by two more days of Yom Tov, isn’t enough to get Diaspora Jews to move to Israel, with its force-feeding of gefilta fish day-after-day, until gefilta fish jelly drips out of people’s noses and horseradish pours out of their ears, I don’t know what it’s going to take until Diaspora Jews are fed up with practicing Judaism in a jar.
By Tzvi Fishman
I found some essays penned by Diaspora Jews who succumbed to the Sin of the Spies in their negative reports of the Holy Land. Oy.
By Tzvi Fishman
Ben Zion's troop returned empty-handed to the well. They found Tevye hiding behind a tree, sunburned and poised to shoot. Back at Shoshana, a community meeting was once again summoned by clanging the dining-hall bell. Everyone in the kibbutz gathered to express an opinion.
By Tzvi Fishman
During the reign of King Solomon, the Nation of Israel was at its prime. We lived in peace in our own homeland. A Jewish government ruled over the country from the majestic city of Jerusalem. All of the people gathered for the Festivals at the Temple three times a year. Jewish law went forth from the Sanhedrin. Prophets communicated the word of the Lord to the Nation and the world. A powerful Jewish army guarded the country’s borders. Torah was studied in great academies of learning. Hebrew was spoken on the street. The leaders of foreign nations flocked to Jerusalem to pay tribute to the Jews.
June 26, 2026 
