יום חמישי, י״ד אלול תשפ״וThursday, August 27, 2026
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Reason #1. Iran's regime is outspokenly dedicated to the goal of destroying the State of Israel. Iranian political, religious, and military leaders have expressed their desire to annihilate Israel at every opportunity they have received....
There is no doubting the Islamist revolution in Tunisia.
In Bais Yaakov, you were either they way they wanted you to be, or you were wrong.
Extremist Sunnis could eventually ruin what began as a peaceful movement for reform and change in Assad's Syria. It would be even more tragic if they did the same thing in Lebanon after the Beirut Spring showed so much promise.
The world often thinks of the Gaza Strip, home to 1.4 million Palestinians, as one of the poorest places on earth, where people live in misery and squalor. But an investigative report shows that it is home to at least 600 millionaires, who have made their wealth thanks to the hundreds of underground tunnels between Gaza and Egypt.
By Steven Plaut
In November 1947, the United Nations was considering the creation of a Jewish state in parts of Western Palestine and a new Arab state in the other parts.
Alan Dershowitz writes that President Obama must make it clear that he has rejected the view of those who are prepared to contain a nuclear Iran and that he will indeed employ military action if that is the only option other than a nuclear Iran.
Many people have a problem with the Chick-fil-A chain of chicken restaurants. Universities have asked it to leave campus cafeterias and mayors have tried to ban it from their cities. The Jewish mayor of Chicago summed up his displeasure by saying “Chick-fil-A values are not Chicago values.”
The land of Canaan was only gained in stages by the Israelites, who had to overcome many internal divisions in order to progress. The same holds true in our day, as Jewry struggles to maintain internal unity while vacillating in its attitude toward the Land of Israel. Though the Jewish right to a sovereign state in its ancestral homeland is incontestable – biblically, historically, morally, and legally – too many Jews and Israelis are self-shackled in the chains of constraint, still mired mentally in the vulnerabilities and fears of the last two millennia, unable to discard the Diaspora.
“Rabbi, is there any religious requirement for Jewish men to wear mezuzahs around their necks?” “Rabbi, if you yourself are clean-shaven, why does this inmate claim his Jewish religion prohibits him from using a razor on his face?”
Palestinian-Arab journalist and Judea-Samaria resident Hisham Jarallah says it is time that the "pro-Palestinian" activists leave the Palestinians alone and search for another cause to advance their messages of hate and violence.
By Yoel Meltzer
In less than three months time the Jewish Home Party, formerly known as the National Religious Party (NRP), will be holding its first ever internal primaries.
When all the bubbles of rhetoric pop, there are still the hard unpleasant realities to deal with.
By Adam Levick
It is shameful that ISM will never face serious critical scrutiny for their recklessness, despite of their well-documented record of terror-abetting extremism, which ultimately took the life of Rachel Corrie.
By effectively making their nuclear program appear to be primarily a threat against Israel, Iran sends a message to the Europeans and the US that they are safe.
A short video to remember all the other Rachels who were murdered by Palestinian Terrorists.
By Moshe Dann
The expulsion of 10,000 Jews from their homes five years ago was not a localized event in the Gaza Strip. It was a national implosion, a national disgrace. It caused enormous physical, psychological, social, cultural, military and strategic damage to the entire nation - and it still does. Like an ecological disaster, its foulness still seeps through our foundations, and continues to poison us.
Earlier this month, a pricing error in El Al's reservations system resulted in tickets to Israel being sold online for prices as low as $325, all included.
Many American parents are passionate about providing their children with opportunities to participate in sports and develop as great athletes. A recent article in the Financial Post posed the question “Are your kids’ athletic dreams worth breaking the bank for?” For parents of elite athletes, the costs can be astronomical. Such parents designate “tens of thousands of dollars of their household budget to help their child’s athletic career blossom, a sacrifice that impacts everything from daily spending to retirement.”
For more than a decade, anti-Israel activists have sought to shoehorn Israel into the nomenclature of apartheid-era South Africa through the use of a tactic named BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions). Apartheid was a universally decried racist system. BDS activists argue that Israel is the second coming of apartheid South Africa and must be treated the same.
By Dr. Michael Goldblatt and Dr. Daniel Mandel
When Barack Obama entered the White House, he promised to make Israeli/Palestinian peacemaking his priority from "day one." And, indeed, in his own way he did. He pressured Israel into freezing Jewish construction in the West Bank for ten months in a bid to entice the Palestinians to negotiate.
White House spokesman Jay Carney recently reiterated the administration’s mantra about Iran, saying there was still “time and space” for a diplomatic solution to be found to resolve the impasse over its nuclear threat.
Yigal Palmor of the Israeli Foreign Ministry sent me a compilation of recent Iranian 'foreign policy proposals'. Useful to have them all in one place. I don't know about you, but to me, they just don't sound reasonable.
By dvora
The focus of a wedding and its source of simcha changes as one ages.
The center of Jewish culture — spiritual, scientific, entrepreneurial, artistic — is today, as it should be, Israel. This was not the case in 1948 or 1967, but it is true now, and I can only expect it to become more true as time goes by.
Israel can theoretically negotiate a compromise with the Arabs in which it gives up land for an end to belligerency. There is a flavor of extortion here, but nevertheless Israel has a position from which to negotiate. But if Israel begins negotiating from the position that it is occupying someone else’s land, then the only thing there is to negotiate is the timetable for withdrawal.
Recently, my wife Clary and I traveled to Lithuania to experience what remains of one of Judaism’s most magnificent centers of learning. My journey, organized by Zvi Lapian of Israel and led by the eminent historian and distinguished scholar Dr. Shnayer Leiman, took me to what was once the world’s center of Torah learning.
By Rabbi Abraham Cooper and Harold Brackman
If there were an Olympics for lying, the winner of this year's gold medal for prevarication would be Egypt’s president, Mohammed Morsi. Of course heads of state lie, but rarely do they display it with such chutzpah. The recent sleight-of-hand involving a president-to-president exchange would shock even cynics.
I never watched “Candid Camera” when I was a kid. We only watched The Wonderful World of Disney” and “Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom.” My parents enforced strict TV rules. But as an adult, when I can watch whatever I please, I really enjoy those old shows and have made up for lost time when it comes to shows like “Candid Camera.”
When Israelis say, “I worry about my grandchildren’s future,” it has a radically different dimension than similar concerns expressed in many other countries.
Parents know each child is different. Similarly, each month is different; each has a different “personality” and a different function. What is the nature of the month of Elul?
Right now the Obama administration is being very, very careful about saying what it thinks about Israel, not wanting to upset the electoral applecart. But the New York Times isn’t afraid to let it all hang out, as it did in today’s editorial on Israel and Iran. The Times is important because its positions are so closely correlated with those of the administration. At least on foreign affairs, the Times is Obama’s Pravda.
As the lights dimmed on Broadway for 60 seconds last night in memory of Oscar-winning composer Marvin Hamlisch, who died on Monday, I took a moment to reflect on the moment in 1976 when I interviewed Hamlisch.
Focusing on the relations between Israel and the Palestinians turns the conflict inside out. In fact it is driven by the absolute rejection of a Jewish state in the Middle East by all the Muslim nations in the region, which dates back to the beginning of Zionism, before the founding of the state of Israel, before the development of specifically Palestinian nationalism, and long before the 1967 war.
“Israel’s moral standing” is not necessarily enhanced by failing to stand up for its legal rights and by, in effect, selling out the Jewish people.
With all the well-earned accolades and fanfare that surrounded last week’s monumental Siyum HaShas, one would expect to find numerous direct references in the Torah mandating the study of Torah. It therefore comes as a great surprise that there is not one direct statement in the Torah commanding its study.
It was not a necessary part of our busy itinerary. It was not even a noble errand. But the craving for a tasty lunch led our group to experience a moment never to be forgotten.
By Goel Jasper
As a child in the 1970s and ‘80s in the United States, I used to define Zionism in blunt, simple terms. If you wore a white shirt with blue pants on Yom Ha’atzmaut, you were behaving like a Zionist. If you had pictures hanging in your home with Israel themes, such as the famous June 1967 photo of the three soldiers standing by the Western Wall or the one of Begin, Carter and Sadat shaking hands at Camp David, that made you a Zionist.
The Beis HaMikdash was destroyed due to sinas chinam, baseless hatred. With the Three Weeks and Tisha B’Av now behind us, have we learned anything from this national tragedy, or is history repeating itself?
Sunday's attack on Jewish worshippers at Joseph's Tomb in Nablus needs to be understood as something more significant than just another unfortunate instance of violence between Jews and Arabs. It is nothing less than a warning of what will happen once Palestinians achieve full sovereignty, as the Obama administration appears to be demanding, over all of the West Bank.
There is nothing wrong with competition and testing the limits of the body, when it is coupled with mutual respect and ethical sportsmanship.
All of Israel’s wars involve the US as a silent ally or silent not-so-much-ally. The question of “what will the US allow Israel to do?” is almost as important as “what is Israel capable of doing?” And the timing of any action with regard to the upcoming election is very relevant to US behavior.
Let’s explain what is usually considered a major paradox: the US provides billions in military aid to Israel, enabling it to keep its enemies at bay. But at the same time its diplomats claim that they don’t know what the capital is, and the major thrust of US policy since 1973 has been to force Israel to withdraw to indefensible boundaries, despite the obvious damage to its security.
I am haredi. I was born in Brooklyn, went to mainstream haredi elementary and high schools, spent two years in Mir Yerushalayim and attended kollel at Beth Medrash Govoha in Lakewood, New Jersey. I wear a black hat on Shabbos and dark pants and a white shirt much of the week. My yarmulke is large, black and velvet, and being a frum and inspired Jew is my most basic self-definition, on par with being human and male.
I am in shock. A friend of mine was visiting the United States and his ride to the airport for his return flight to Israel fell through. At the last minute he needed to find a ride to a terminal that was 50 minutes away in order to catch a bus to New York City where he would then take a shuttle to the airport.
By Ed Lion
Half a century ago in May, Israel hanged Nazi war criminal Adolph Eichmann for overseeing Germany’s extermination of six million European Jews, fully one-third of the world's prewar Jewish population. The murder of the six million staggers the mind. Such a vast breadth of our people, each of them with his own individual dreams, loves and aspirations, exterminated.
Sheldon Adelson is again under attack in the media. This time the billionaire is being criticized for his effort to target Jewish voters in swing states including Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
The popular image of the Jews who took part in battles for black civil rights is of liberal activists and idealistic college students. Yet several important early civil rights efforts in the United States and South Africa were undertaken by officers of the Irgun Zvai Leumi, the Jewish underground militia in British Mandatory Palestine.
As'ad Abu Khalil, tenured Professor of Political Science at California State University, Stanislaus: My favorite Zionist delusion is the notion that the Arab people don’t hate Israel but that the Arab governments incite the people to hate Israel, when it is the other way round.
One must ask what, exactly, is the aim of Israeli spying against the US? It is certainly not — as with Soviet and contemporary Russian espionage — to weaken us diplomatically and gain a military advantage in a possible conflict. Nor does it, as is the case with Chinese spying, also include a massive component of industrial espionage to erode America’s competitive advantage in world markets.
By Charlene Seidle and Brachie Sprung
By harnessing the creative energy that is bubbling below the surface, Jerusalem is being restored to its rightful place as the center of world-wide social innovation.
A few years ago, I happened to be in Los Angeles for the fast of Tisha B'Av. Towards the end of the fast, between afternoon and evening prayers, the rabbi of the shul asked if I could say a few words to the congregation to explain the significance of the holy day and the fast.
No nation is perfect, and they all have skeletons in their closets. But the US does have a commitment to such things as individual rights, equality of opportunity, social mobility, democracy, rule of law, etc. Many other nations — perhaps most of them — don’t even pay lip service to these ideals, much less exemplify them.
I have always felt that the Daf Yomi would be the leader of that "Ahavat Chinam". In all my experiences attending those various Daf Yomis across the globe, nobody ever asked me what Kashrut I observe, how big my Kippa was or if my wife covers her hair. We were all one nation, one people studying the same page of Gemara. And then it came crashing down.
These lines are written in loving memory of our dear father, Reb Shlomo Zev ben Reb Baruch Yehudah Nutovic, a”h, whose first yahrzeit is 7 Menachem Av. May the positive lessons learned from this essay be a zechus for his neshamah.
Mr. Peter. A. Joseph, Chairman, Israel Policy Forum Mr. David A. Halperin, Executive Director, Israel Policy Forum Dear Mr. Joseph and Mr. Halperin, Permit me to introduce myself. I am Ambassador Alan Baker, a member of the Edmond Levy Commission established to examine the status of building in Judea and Samaria and to make recommendations to the government on this and related issues.
The Internet is a medium that has made its way in its short existence all the way to the center of contemporary life. Many of our daily tasks are now tied to it, and will be more so in the future.
It’s being called a game changer. Everybody seems to be talking about the recently released Jewish Community Study of New York and its surprising findings regarding New York’s changing Jewish demography.
This year, as Israel observes the traditional period of national mourning for the destruction of the Beis HaMikdash on Tisha B’Av, it has again been revealed that the Islamic Waqf is carrying out unsupervised work at the Temple Mount, potentially causing irrevocable damage to Judaism’s holiest site.
As the Levy Commission recently found, Israel is not in violation of international law, and it is not occupying or colonizing “Arab lands.” Jewish Voice for Peace's ideas of the ‘fundamental rights’ of Arab citizens of Israel goes far beyond what we normally think of as civil rights — for example, these ‘rights’ are said to be violated by Israel’s being a Jewish state — and UN resolution 194 does not require Israel to admit the grandchildren of refugees.
By Alex Abel
Yishai Fleisher, managing editor of JewishPress.com, appeared on L’Chaim, a show that has been running on ShalomTV for years. “Fear is everywhere,” he told the interviewer, Rabbi Mark Golub. “People go silent when I talk about fear because they realize how much fear they live with…we need to be proud.”
The recently highlighted "crisis of Zionism" is in fact a quandary afflicting Jewry and no new phenomenon. Rather, it has two sources, each centuries old.
By Neil Harris
Internet usage is something many of us have been thinking about in this post-Asifa world. I am not writing this to debate the effectiveness of Asifa-type events but only to suggest that since the Citi Field Asifa people aren’t as reluctant to talk about the Internet as they use to be. We are discussing, in a positive manner, Internet safety while projects such as the Internet Shiur series created by Rabbi Gil Student and Dovid Teitelbaum are educating and informing people about Internet use.
Many years ago when I was helping my congregation write a new constitution, I submitted a first draft to an expert who had been involved in setting up new shuls. One paragraph read, “All matters of halacha (Jewish law) will be determined by the congregational rabbi.” Pretty straightforward, I thought.
The Washington Post trod over some familiar territory this past weekend with a 7,000-word retrospective on the Obama administration’s Middle East peace process misadventures.
There is an old rabbinic anecdote about a rabbi who was called on to deliver a eulogy for someone who had no redeeming social value whatsoever. The rabbi was hard pressed to think of anything positive to say about this person. So when he spoke he solemnly pronounced: “No matter how evil the deceased truly was, he was still a far better person than was his brother!”
No matter what, some people simply cannot face the brute fact that there is no possibility of peace with the Palestinian Arabs and the larger Arab world in the foreseeable future. They have convinced themselves that yet another partition of the land of Israel will end the conflict. It won’t. It will only damage Israel’s ability to defend herself while providing a platform for more demands. Soon we will be hearing about “Arab Haifa, Yafo and Acco,” and then perhaps “Tel Arabiyya.”
On July 11, 1947, the SS Exodus began its journey, but never reached its intended destination. Yesterday, another Exodus story occurred: 229 Jews left the U.S. on a special flight organized by Nefesh b'Nefesh and the State of Israel. Of those on board, 99 were children. There were 38 families - and 59 singles. The oldest person on the flight is 86 years old, the youngest, only 6 months old. But this time, no one stopped them before they could touch down on Israeli soil.
The concept of a ‘belligerent occupation’ does not apply here. What country owned the territory that Israel ‘occupied’? Not Jordan, which was there illegally, nor Britain, whose Mandate had ended, nor the Ottoman Empire, which no longer existed. The nation with the best claim was Israel, the nation-state of the Jewish people, who were the intended beneficiaries of the Mandate. Judea and Samaria are disputed, not occupied, and the Jewish people have a prima facie claim.
By Alex Abel
Here’s a list of something exciting to do in Jerusalem each night of the week. This doesn’t have to be taken literally – choose your favorites or mix and match, depending on how long you’re here. Post below with any other ideas of your own! Saturday A classic and possibly overdone routine for Birthright groups: […]
The day school tuition crisis is not new. It has been brewing for years. School costs continue to rise while unemployment and underemployment remain high. And one also needs money to live in a neighborhood with shuls and mikvehs, to buy kosher food, to make proper simchas, to cover Yom Tov expenses, etc.
A watershed moment took place in Brooklyn last month on primary night. Those who care about private school education should sit up and take notice.
A recent CNN Money article focused on how more students than ever are requesting need-based financial aid from the private schools they attend. “Private schools are getting flooded with financial aid applications, and a growing number of the parents seeking help are earning $150,000 or more a year,” the article stated. It also pointed out that “overall, the average cost of tuition at private schools across all grades is nearly $22,000 a year, up 4% from a year ago and 26% higher than it was in the 2006-07 academic year, according to the National Association of Independent Schools.”
“The Scream,” a unique and evocative painting by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch (1863-1944), sold recently at Sotheby's for nearly $120,000,000. The price was attributed to its being the last of four editions still in private hands and the fact that it has been an icon of Western culture for over a century. The colors are vivid, the mood is stark, and the being on the bridge is overwhelmed by his surroundings. It captures a man alone in a world awry.
It’s human nature to hide our heads in the sand. That may be because we are mostly optimistic. We believe everything will be all right even when we know we are taking a chance.
Unfortunately, Israeli governments have not taken the correct line from the beginning. By not vehemently opposing Arab claims, insisting that the territory was disputed rather than occupied, and asserting Israel’s own rights under the Mandate, they allowed the PLO — with the willing connivance of anti-Zionist forces throughout the world — to make its point of view part of the conventional wisdom.
It's strange that it took more than a week for State to notice, and that the statement was not made by Secretary of State Clinton. After all, since June 26, Ms Clinton had time to comment on the Solomon Islands’ and Venezuelan independence days, the national days of the Congo, Rwanda, Somalia and Burundi, and of course Canada day; speak at the Climate Clean Air and Green Embassy event in Helsinki, Finland; and much more.
By dvora
Former Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Shamir passed away last weekend. In the course of my career as a correspondent for The Jewish Press at the UN and in Israel, as well as a parliamentary aide and spokesman for Israel’s first science minister, Professor Yuval Ne’eman, I met with dozens of world leaders, ministers, high-ranking officials and ambassadors. None of them left as indelible a mark on me as did Shamir.
By David Mandel
Ten years ago, If you had asked a victim of sexual abuse what he or she wanted most, the answer would have been, “I want my abuser to apologize, to acknowledge that it was his fault and not mine.” Today, if asked that same question, the victim would speak of prosecution and justice.
“If you put Google, Apple, and Microsoft together, it still doesn’t compare to the miracles of Jewish renaissance I have witnessed in this country,” I said to two reporters from The New York Times and Moscow Times.
The victory of the Zionist movement was won despite long odds, desperate hardships and grievous costs in blood. The men and women who battled those odds did so in the face of the conventional wisdom of their day that told them they had no chance of forcing the British Empire to make good on its promise to create a National Home for the Jews or to defeat an Arab and Muslim world determined to crush the newborn state of Israel. They needed not only courage but also an iron will and the patience to bear great suffering while never losing sight of their goal.
The Swedish rescuer Raoul Wallenberg was born 100 years ago this summer, and his centennial is being commemorated with events in many cities across Europe and North America. On July 26, a symposium in his memory will be held at Yad Vashem’s International Institute for Holocaust Research in Jerusalem.
I don't need to tell you how important the upcoming US presidential elections are, and you can be a part of that! Don't look at the numbers. Don’t ask: "Will my vote really matter??" Simply register, with no cost involved, and let the powers in America see how many expats voted.
The honor and dignity, if there can be any, goes to the Israeli athletes and to Israel itself; the shame and disgust goes to the Olympic committee. For 60 seconds, the athletes and audience and around the world, 60 seconds of silence could have been a show of triumph over terror, of honor in brotherhood and peace - instead, they will remain, 40 years late and beyond, an endless mark of shame.
By Danny Danon
I had the honor of spending an evening with the former Prime Minister. I was enthralled with his stories and life lessons, especially with his core conviction that a leader must truly believe in and be ready to defend his policies. If a leader does so, he told me, there is no need to worry about the criticism that will inevitably follow any brave decision.
Absurd, isn’t it - Israel should take a loan to support an organization that officially considers Jews the offspring of apes and pigs and venerates ‘heroes’ like Samir Kuntar and Dalal Mughrabi whose heroism consisted of murdering Jewish children?
There I was, in dire gloom, cart frozen well distant from the cash register. I was sorely aggrieved. Until I remembered a flash of soul-searching during my flight when I promised I would try to improve my grumpiness a bit and seek alleged silver linings even in dismal circumstances. What could I do save give my commitment the old college try.
When Free Speech Collides with Hate Speech, Truth is the Remedy.
Disbelief and denial are two words that can describe the alcohol and drug problem in the Jewish community, and that is a problem in itself.
I have tried to lead a life in which the core values are Ahavas Torah and Ahavas Yisrael. To the extent I have succeeded I did so by taking an unusual route – one I do not generally recommend. I moved into the Torah world and Torah learning after I already had a sophisticated secular education and a clear path to a wide choice of prestigious professional opportunities.
Worried about a nuclear Iran? Do you think such a development would not only threaten Israel's existence but would intimidate the Arab countries of the Gulf, put the radical Islamist regime in position to threaten the West, and lead to unmanageable nuclear proliferation? Have no fear! Kenneth N. Waltz, the highly respected professor of international relations at Columbia University, argues in a recent article of Foreign Affairs magazine that "Iran Should Get the Bomb."
When Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney told the passionately pro-Israel members of the Faith and Freedom Coalition that he would “do the opposite” of the things that President Obama has done regarding Israel, the room erupted in applause. They understood exactly what he meant because they know the Obama administration has not strengthened the U.S.-Israel relationship. President Obama has brought that strategic alliance to its lowest point in decades.
Gov. Mitt Romney has made some outrageous comments and taken some extreme positions in this presidential campaign. But few, if any, are more baffling than his latest statement on his plans for the U.S.-Israel relationship. Asked what he would do to strengthen America’s alliance with Israel, he said, “by and large, you can just look at the things the president has done and do the opposite.”
Over the last decade, we've seen the convergence and alliance of Islamism with the far Left (and, with time, the not-so-far Left). Today, there seems to be another supposedly "impossible" convergence underway: We are witnessing the beginnings of an alliance between the radical Right (KKK, neo-Nazis, etc.) and the radical black Left (Black Panthers, Farrakhan, etc.)
At the recent President's Conference in Jerusalem - though Shimon Peres and others spoke about the dearth of women in professional life in Israel, few spoke about the amazing lack of women presenters at the conference. I counted only about a hand-full. One was Ayaan Hirsi-Ali.
Prior to the creation of the Kol Tzedek program, only a handful of sexual abuse allegations from the Orthodox community were reported to my office each year. Our information was that victims of sexual assault in the community were afraid to come forward and report to secular authorities due to enormous community disapproval and pressure. In an effort to overcome these obstacles and encourage reporting of these heinous crimes, and to ensure the continued cooperation of the victim with the prosecution, my office launched Project Kol Tzedek.
By Rabbi Shimshon HaKohen Nadel
In February, Israel’s Supreme Court ruled the Tal Law discriminatory and unconstitutional in a vote of six to three. The law, which provides exemptions for young men studying in yeshiva full time, has been the subject of much criticism and controversy.
The world famous economist John Kenneth Galbraith said it best: “There are few ironclad rules of diplomacy but to one there is no exception. When an official reports that talks were useful, it can safely be concluded that nothing was accomplished.”
Since Oslo we have had some Israeli governments emulate Neville Chamberlain’s foolish position. While the current government has not done so, there certainly is vast room for improvement in the presentation of Israel’s case to the world.
On January 31, my family’s world was turned upside down. I received a phone call from my mother early in the morning. “Go to Baltimore, your sister is sick. Daddy and I are flying up today [from Florida]. Her organs are shutting down. It’s bad.”
August 21, 2026 
