Eye on Zion

At least 6-8 of my close friends left Israel over the course of the last seven years.

I told her that the goal of bombers was to have those shock waves go into our body and cause damage to our internal organs. But if we can take that shock wave and let it pass through us and change that blast energy into something positive - so that the energy of the blast is converted through our bodies into a healing energy and into a building energy - then we will have thwarted the efforts of the bomber.

It is easy to spot Haman in today's world, but who is this year's Esther?

And the anti-Israel crowd loves it!

While my family was here (in Jerusalem) for Pesach, we got to act like tourists, that is, we got to see the amazing things that exist right under our noses.

I had been curious about Orthodox Union’s annual Jewish Communities Fair, and so while on tour in America, I joined the hungry Modern-Orthodox masses as they searched for new communities and a new life in far flung American locales - but not in Israel

I am a proud graduate of the Cardozo School of Law, and I support the right of the Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution to bestow the International Advocate for Peace Award upon former US president Jimmy Carter. And I do not agree with the so-called “Coalition of Concerned Cardozo Alumni” who asked Cardozo Alumni to “to condition any continued support of Cardozo, be it financial or otherwise, on the cancellation of this event” (although I respect their efforts). Student protest is the way to go.

No one in Boston gave me dirty looks. Nobody implied I was the source of all evil, somehow nefariously involved in the terrorism that had just struck. My Jewish genes expect to be blamed when things go wrong for the gentiles, but the average American - certainly the Bostonians that I met - looked right past my decidedly ethnic Middle Eastern appearance.

Rabbi Yishai Fleisher is joined by Rabbi Dr. Joshua Berman, author and professor of Tanakh at Bar-Ilan University, to talk about the secret structure in the story of Noah's Ark. 

Don’t demand an immediate “yes” from Diaspora Jews, help them make their own way to a connection with Israel.

Perfect Hamantashen

I wrote this short story when I was at Yeshiva University and it is partly a testament to the powerful influence of our beloved Rebbe, Rabbi Moshe Dovid Tendler. 

Now I felt totally dejected, because I realized how doubly hard it will be to detach Jews from New York.

The Arabic saying is that "whoever controls the Dome of the Rock, controls the world" - and they are afraid of losing their control and power. They see Jewish Jerusalem being built, and they see their own states falling apart, and they are scared.

In that one moment I though of gratitude: I am so thankful to you, fallen tzanchan, fallen Jew, fallen brother. Without you my parents would have had no place to run to from the choke hold of the Soviet Union, without you Jews of the world would never have shelter, and without you, I would not stand here today, wearing this uniform with a red beret that did not yet belong to me.

Yishai Fleisher responds to Chuck Schumer.