יום חמישי, י׳ תמוז תשפ״וThursday, June 25, 2026
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By Judith Tydor Baumel-Schwartz
After Max's death, Shirley and Chaskel had bought an apartment in Israel for the future. Suddenly the future was now.
I decided that I was going to attempt to go down to the Kotel, which at that stage no one had yet reached.
There was no Ruler of the Universe I could call upon to save me, and so I had to fight this lonely battle until I found the One Strength that could save me.
In his later years he spoke out in favor of war crimes trials for the perpetrators of genocide in the former Yugoslavia, and he lent his name to the Holocaust study center and Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles.
By Judith Tydor Baumel-Schwartz
Watching the puppy's wobbling walk, she named him Umbriago, similar to the word "drunk" in Italian and Spanish (embriagado).
The Messiah, a descendant of the house of David, will establish a reign of righteousness and truth.
Torah and halacha are based on a different language, one that teaches responsibility and pride, freedom and merit, self-acceptance and natural morality.
The discovery ultimately established the major defense mechanism in innate immunity, for which he won his Nobel Prize.
At that point we begin to understand that fast days provide us with a great gift: the chance to become close to the King of the Universe.
By Judith Tydor Baumel-Schwartz
Taking her daughter's hand, Freida Sima once again rued her husband Mordche's communist polemics and political pessimism that Shirley had grown up with.
Religious man struggles first with maintaining the daily commitment but then with infusing that commitment with vitality and enthusiasm.
The defeat of the Japanese there provided an important foundation for our ultimate victory over Japan, and the battle became a symbol of the great sacrifices made by our fighting forces during the war.
By Judith Tydor Baumel-Schwartz
“We took nothing, as we thought we would come home in a few days, but we never came home,” Sheindl recalled. She never saw Shaja again.
By Rachel Weiss
While he frequently brought “friends” home, Josh never let on how this one was friendless, or how the other was someone he’d spotted sitting on a stoop outdoors looking miserable.
Throughout the early years of his reign, Yannai had resisted taking any actions that the people would deem overly provocative.
By Abba Eban
In short, there was peril for Israel wherever it looked. Its manpower had been hastily mobilized. Its economy and commerce were beating with feeble pulses. Its streets were dark and empty. There was an apocalyptic air of approaching peril. And Israel faced this danger alone.
By Mark Schulte
As of 2016, the Nobel contingent from New York City public high schools stands at 42 (37 of them Jews).
According to Schwartzbard, "When the policeman told me Petlura was dead I could not hide my joy. I leaped forward and threw my arms about his neck," and when the gendarme, Roger Mercier, asked Schwartzbard if he was the shooter, he replied, "I have killed a great assassin."
By Judith Tydor Baumel-Schwartz
Her heart went out to her mother, who had so wanted to stay in America, and who had cried her heart out to her eldest daughter the night before she returned to Mihowa.
As someone who witnessed horrors in no fewer than seven concentration camps, my father also wanted to publicly address the question of how it was possible that large masses of people, numbering in the millions, could be led to their extermination without a fight.
There is a whole other transcendental level of delight, enchantment, and reverence that applies to collectors of Judaica documents.
This has served to lower the bar when it comes to accepted standards of morality while corroding some once-healthy American ideals.
Today (10 Nissan – April 18) is the 21st yahrzeit of my daughter Alisa Flatow, Hy”d. I’d like to share with readers of The Jewish Press some personal reflections on the events of 1995 and what has happened since.
By Judith Tydor Baumel-Schwartz
Editor’s Note: This is the seventh of a multi-part series on the life and times of a young woman who came to America on her own in the early 1900s and made her way in a new country. The sixth part (“The Motherhood of Freida Sima”) appeared as the front-page essay in the Feb. 12 […]
As always, the idea is for invited participants to finish off in any way they wish sentence fragments we’ve given them.
Among the more than 2,500 costume-clad attendees were members of New York's most prominent Jewish families, including one gentleman dressed as a dreidel...
This is a beautiful land. The panoramic hills and valleys, the inimitable white stones, the kedushah embedded in every meter, the spicy melting pot of Jews. It fills the soul in a way nothing else can.
By Judith Tydor Baumel-Schwartz
“When one door closes another one opens,” she answered, her mind already a whirlwind of plans that would change their lives for the next two decades.
“A truly happy person does not allow his happiness to be dependent on any external factor over which he may not have control.” (Chachmah Umussar, vol. 2, pp. 331-2)
By Nathan Lewin
“Talmudic sages believed that judges who accepted bribes would be punished by eventually losing all knowledge of the divine law.”
By Yaffa Ganz
This is not to say the Palestinians are blameless or justified in the ongoing conflict – far from it – but we are the ones with the power and our government has managed to destroy any hope on either side for a solution.
By Judith Tydor Baumel-Schwartz
Insisting on a traditional Jewish home, Freida Sima reached a compromise with her communist husband: he would not interfere in household matters of religion while she would turn a blind eye to whatever he would do outside the home.
Seuss’s wartime cartoons denounced American discrimination against Jews and called attention to the early stages of the Holocaust.
Yitro, on the other hand, arrived at the truth through a very different set of circumstances. He had devoted his entire life to idolatry, only to later realize the futility of his efforts.
In fact, all the Yomim Tovim that fall on the fifteenth of the month represent instances of t’chias hamaisim.
By Judith Tydor Baumel-Schwartz
Freida Sima pulled her hand back in shock. “Married?” she shouted. “This is how you are asking me to marry you?”
By Nathan Lewin
Payment was not, apparently, an essential ingredient in the allegedly criminal conduct the FBI intended to punish if the “Getcha Sting” had succeeded in luring participants into a “forced Get.”
Perhaps we were better off when we were less sophisticated and just lived with emunah peshutah.
William Howard Taft (1857-1930) was the only American president to also sit on the Supreme Court. The Republican was an effective administrator but a poor politician; caught in the intense battles between progressives and conservatives, he received little credit for his administration's achievements, which included establishing a postal savings system, admitting Arizona and New Mexico […]
By Judith Tydor Baumel-Schwartz
After several dates, when she sensed the “chicken killer” was about to propose, my grandmother beat a hasty retreat, remarking to her aunts that one day longer with him and she would have become a vegetarian.
Chanukah tells of a powerful story of light over darkness, when a small Hasmonean band of Jewish soldiers defeated a vastly larger, better trained, and better equipped Seleucid (Syrian-Greek) force. As we know, the struggle was not primarily militaristic in nature. The main objective for Mattisyahu, Yehuda, and their followers was to eradicate from their […]
On Chanukah it is we who provide the illumination. We cause light to come into the world. Darkness forces us, so to speak, to search for the Source of the eternal light emanating from the Creator.
Kissinger was viewed by many as a self-hating Jew who turned on his father and his people by consistently acting in a manner inimical to Jewish interests.
By Judith Tydor Baumel-Schwartz
“Remember, you are sixteen!” she said, reminding her of the cutoff for unaccompanied passengers wishing to work in America.
Prayers are the mighty and powerful weapons of the Jewish people. There is no substitute for our weapons, our prayers.
I’ve learned that though pulpit rabbis all have basic roles, they can be as diverse in their calling as they are in their personalities.
At a time when many Jews changed their names and joined churches to deflect anti-Semitism and to facilitate assimilation into American society, Isidor did not deny his heritage; indeed, he embraced it.
The target of her investigation is the Orthodox community, and WNYC’s denying it an equal voice to defend itself was unfair – and bad journalism to boot.
Rabbi Yehuda responded, "If you didn't know him personally, it is impossible for you to fully appreciate his loss." I heartily agreed.
By Judith Tydor Baumel-Schwartz
“Not only will I have to stop studying when I get married, I'll die a slow death if I end up like that,” she told Marium. “Better Tateh should just kill me and be done with it.”
Levine offered the Columbia to Lindbergh for $15,000, but insisted that, as a non-negotiable condition of the sale, he retain the right to designate the crew for what would surely be a historic flight.
This is not the only time in Jewish ritual where we demonstrate that as Jews we have a clear interest in involving the world at large in our avodah.
Whether the victim of our deeds is another person or Hashem (or both), we need to be able to express our regret clearly and without condition.
When they fight against us, it is because they are waging war against the Jewish idea.
As the First Zionist Congress was indisputably one of the seminal events in modern Jewish history, it is not surprising that it became the subject of some of the most beloved, beautiful, and rare Rosh Hashanah cards ever created.
Many people view a letter or manuscript by a chassidic rebbe or the Chofetz Chaim as intrinsically holy.
The Second Commonwealth ended due to causeless hatred, sinas chinam, the ultimate lack of respect in one another.
The concept for Curious George began with a story about Raffy, a lonesome giraffe who befriends nine monkeys, the youngest of whom is named Fifi.
Although graduate school culture may have changed, in the 1950s and for many years after, grades were regarded as a cinch.
The Fifteenth Day of the month of Av became a day of national rejoicing. The moment that had seemed hopeless became the moment of Redemption.
There are a variety of sources that, comics historians claim, served as sources of inspiration for the Superman character.
Some hard-core Israelis and would-be olim believe there is no life for the Jewish people outside of Israel, period.
By Mark Schulte
Most of the remarkable women of The Greatest Generation were college graduates when very few American women held college degrees.
In addition to the palace’s tremendous size it was home to the “hanging gardens,” which were counted among the seven wonders of the ancient world.
Any number of false narratives regarding the reason the Beatles did not perform at Ramat Gan continue to circulate, ranging from a dispute between Ori and another music promoter, Giora Godik, to the recalcitrance of Golda Meir.
By Nathan Lewin
In a 1936 majority opinion, Supreme Court Justice George Sutherland said that the president is “the sole organ of the federal government in the field of international relations.”
It will be hard for many to accept that some of Golda's gems may not have come from Golda's mouth
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.
The establishment of Hebrew University was a cause much beloved to Einstein who in 1923, during what would be his only trip to Eretz Yisrael, delivered the university’s inaugural lecture on Har Hatzofim (Mt. Scopus) and, discussing the theory of relativity, spoke the first few sentences of his address in Hebrew.
The reaction is so strong that nine times out of ten, parents engage in some form of coping mechanism before arriving at a level of acceptance of a special-needs diagnosis.
By Jason Maoz
Some of the president’s defenders took to arguing that the overwhelming majority of German military personnel interred in Bitburg were regular Wehrmacht soldiers who died on the battlefield and likely were not involved in atrocities against civilians.
By Ed Lion
Each craved more out life and within a few months they’d mastered English, received their high school equivalencies, and begun climbing the rungs of the ladder of the American Dream.
Jews thank Hashem at every step. We thank Him for our most basic physical existence. We thank Hashem for every step, for every breath, for every aspect of our elevation from the dust.
We must create an atmosphere of complete intolerance for such conduct, while reminding our children that we can take pride in our unique and distinctive purpose without knocking others.
Understanding the process described in Dayenu reveals deep relevance for us today.
By Andrea Levin
There was not a word in the story to convey that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, and before him Yasir Arafat, rejected Israeli peace offers that would have curtailed settlement expansion and removed some outlying settlements.
We are grateful to Hashem that we have been privileged to institute this program and that over the years we have experienced tremendous siyata d’shmaya, with the program spreading throughout the world and its membership rapidly rising.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
There is something quite distinctive about the biblical approach to time.
The Turks, believing Absalom was a spy, tortured him but he did not give them any information.
My guess is that most yeshiva students also winged it or cut corners because they, too, had rather onerous schedules.
Pesach is a Torah-based holiday whose fundamental observances are rooted in Torah law; Purim is a rabbinic holiday whose laws and customs are grounded in the rabbinic tradition.
A central concept in any discussion about happiness is achieving clarity. “Ain simcha ela k’hataras hasefeikos” – there is no joy as that experienced with the removal of doubt.
I happen to believe that for a couple to spend a few years in kollel is a wonderful way to start a marriage.
By Nick Shufro
We had heard bits and pieces of stories about the war years, but they were vague recollections of a young girl and other family members and we weren’t sure if they were real or imagined.
Our current feature consists of two parts: (1) Israel and Jewish politics and (2) Jewish organizations.
Great leaders like Miriam and like Sarah Schenirer possess the capacity to challenge the status quo that confronts them.
By Ed Lion
“These are good matzah balls,” my aunt Robertine would say, but her sister Irma would counter “No, not compared to Mama’s. They were always so light yet they never fell apart.”
King was particularly concerned about the growing defamatory characterization of Zionism as racism, and he opposed the anti-Zionism in the “Black Power” movement.
We shed many tears and had endless discussions as to what had gone wrong. What did we do or fail to do that caused our son to distance himself from what we viewed as so beautiful and meaningful?
For nearly sixty-five years national self-definition has been the skeleton in the closet of Israeli politics and culture.
He ruthlessly crushed the revolt, and, despite lacking official Roman sanction, ordered the rebel leaders put to death without trial.
For Am Yisrael, the sun’s movements are subservient to the purpose of our existence.
By Sara Lehmann
What’s important is to make the case for Israel more forcefully and to give it the articulation that the next presidential candidates ought to have.
The brilliance of Yaakov’s approach – and by extension, any type of individual or group effort – is that it appealed to three different modes of salvation.
Golden presents a compelling saga of poor but determined immigrants who fled pogroms and harsh conditions in their homelands for a better life in a land of opportunity.
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.
Where did this incredible strength come from? What drove these Jews, who had nearly lost all of their national identity and spiritual connectivity, to risk their lives by standing up against one of the strongest and most fearsome governments of its time?
This marked the first time I experienced the palpable sense of living, breathing history in my hands. “This is actually for sale?” I asked. “But how do I know it’s real?”
To say he was beloved because of the way he loved his students does not sufficiently capture the reality.
By Jason Maoz
While not all criticism of Israel stemmed from anti-Semitism, Podhoretz contends the level of animosity towards Israel rises exponentially the farther left one moved along the spectrum.
June 19, 2026 
