יום רביעי, כ׳ אלול תשפ״וWednesday, September 2, 2026
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When David Wolfson designed the Israeli flag for the Zionist Congress in Basel 125 years ago, he told Herzl that he drew his inspiration from the tallis.
I can touch on semiotics and explain how it is a shield that offers protection, but that the identity that it represents is its own protection.
By Jordana Baruchov Grreenfield
Now, when saying the words of King David I feel as if I have his personal protection.
Hubby had mixed feelings about royalty. On the one hand, they fascinated him... On the other hand, he resented terribly that there were tiers of royals who by the luck of their birth, received benefits ad infinitum to which “commoners” were not entitled.
The highest price realized for an item in the sale was on an 18th-century silver Torah crown from Italy. Assigned an estimate of $200,000-$300,000, it realized $478,000.
Though the mitzvah is understood to apply only when the Jews are all residing in Eretz Yisrael, the Aderet in this work and in an additional book he wrote on the subject encouraged to idea of reviving the mitzvah of Hakhel in modern times.
The back story on R. Morris Joseph is one of the most fascinating, albeit largely unknown, narratives in the history of British-Jewish clergy.
One part of us truly wants to improve and grow, while other parts of us are lazy and complacent.
Giving honor to another person doesn’t cost anything. Building up another is giving them life.
Sukkot was coming. By now I’d sat in too many wonderful families’ sukkot and craved my own.
We know that the original sukkah was built solely by Hashem, so clearly Hashem does not need our help to build the structure.
Years of love and caring can be hard to remember when your reality changes. Yet, one internalizes the commitment.
"More German than the Germans" is what aptly described many German Jews from the 19th century up to and occasionally including the Hitler Era.
In Kol Nidre (1918), Reik begins with a recollection of visiting the home of a music-loving friend and having an inexplicably strong reaction to a haunting minor musical passage that sounded very familiar to him but which he could not place.
Shul is where the cycle of life happens.
By Rabbanit Dr. Adena Berkowitz
As we know, the concept of shul may mean different things to different people. Hopefully, for most of us it means the place to daven with a minyan, connect to HaKadosh Baruch Hu and feel spiritually recharged.
By Anat Coleman
While I'm not about to compare Yankee Stadium to shul, I do think about the process of intentionally creating spaces that are meaningful and people want to return to time and again.
Even where minyanim gather in less grandiose houses of worship, the sums of money they expend for beautification and refurbishing are staggering.
Literary evidence from the time of the Second Temple, such as the works of Josephus and Philo, and even archeology, indicates that it was a place of instruction and learning.
I have chosen to release the chapters in the order they were written, to fully explain the changes which occur with time both for the patient and for the caregiver.
Describing the situation in 1918, R. Itshe Mater Korman, a Breslov hasid from Poland recalled, Then began the great dangers surrounding the Gathering in Uman – even from within the Ukraine – due to the bands of murderers, may their name be blotted out.
In this article, I present some of my more “off the beaten path” items that I think might be of interest to readers.
You can feel scared and excited, regretful and inspired to do better, broken but hopeful.
By JJ Eleff
The previous rebbe of Chabad explains that the main thing is not the content of the cry, Father, save me, but rather the cry itself.
By The Honorable Rachel Freier
The shofar blasts remind us that Hashem is the infinite and all-knowing king and judge.
One of the lessons that I teach is that to blow a teruah, you need to blow 14 small sounds.
Sometimes our most inner yearnings cannot be adequately contained in words.
R. Haim Meir Mizrahi overcame many tribulations to be able to print this volume. A large portion of his writings were destroyed in the great fire in Izmir, which occurred on the 11th of Av, 1851.
The cornerstone for the Knesset was laid on October 14, 1958, but the building was not formally dedicated until almost eight years later on August 30, 1966.
There is just something very Jewish about lox. Whether you are European or South African, any Jew anywhere can identify with lox.
Our fascination with being able to consume the same delectable non-kosher offerings gave rise to kosher pizza, kosher Chinese food, and of course what simcha would be complete without sushi?
Less sublime, however, is the phenomenon of bagels and lox Judaism, when these foods become a stand-in for being Jewish as a whole.
In Israel I discovered that lox is a delicacy and quite expensive, so I don’t indulge very often.
By Nachum Segal
When salami or steak or facon is not available, what does one do?
By Sandy Eller
All classes are to be given exclusively in English by a competent teacher, with remedial instruction provided as needed for students to become proficient in English.
Many authors who had no living descendants had a particular urge to write a book, both to leave a legacy and in the hope that the publication may serve as a merit to be blessed with offspring.
Fighting for the Confederacy would put him in a position of possibly contributing to the death of his son, Alfred, Jr., who had followed in his footsteps, graduated from West Point, commenced his own army career, and was fighting for the Union.
By Sandy Eller
Imagine a crowd of 50,000 or even more praying in Uman and [the Russians] decide to shoot missiles, said Korniychuk. Can you guarantee that won’t happen after they were shelling shopping malls and kindergartens and schools?
By Rachel Kohn
Roses for me will always bring to mind my paternal and maternal grandmothers, both of whom went by the name Rose in English.
Naturally, the verse in Shir HaShirim – K'shoshana bein ha’chochim rings in my ears as well, including the songs that have been written for those words.
She told me, “Everything will be fine. I’m watching over you.” And then she vanished. I never dreamt about her again.
Open any Jewish history book. Attend any Jewish history lecture. The value of teaching about the thorns in our past will be there.
When we learn to receive graciously, men will feel respected and grow more capable of pleasing us.
American Jewry was not speaking about child abuse in the 1980s. In fact, the status quo was one that typically supported the abuser and shunned the victim.
Beginning in 1934, all Jews who were able to emigrate from Germany were blocked from removing any major assets or funds. In lieu of their assets, they were issued "Konversionskasse," a sort of promissory note supposedly backed by the Reichsbank...
Anna sought to capture great subtlety and abstraction of Middle Eastern landscapes and the almost primordial views that featured a blazing sun and desert sands; vibrant colors often muted by dusty air; ravines and vegetation manifesting riots of color; and, most of all, rocks, bare hills, and olive trees.
By Keshet Starr
Starting from Hashem’s injunction to speak to “bais Yaakov,” to Schenirer’s efforts to strengthen Judaism through girls’ education, it is ultimately Jewish women who will lead the charge to our next stage in growing as a community.
Bais Yaakov is not a school. It is the term Moshe uses when speaking to the Jewish women. We as Jewish women are a unit. When we realize that, we are a force to be reckoned with.
While the colossus founded by the visionary Sarah Schenirer continues to animate communities across the Jewish world, it seems to me that the Bais Yaakov model has become, over time, more monolithic in hashkafa and approach.
Why the women first? Because they would learn the Torah that they needed to learn and then tell it to the children. They would teach the children!
By Hillel Fuld
The term Bais Yaakov is also referenced in our prayers, specifically the prayer of Hallel that we say on holidays.
Following the great tragedies and deaths, many of the survivors were left destitute and homeless, with many traveling west or south. An indirect result of the tragedy was the arrival of many great rabbis as refugees in the Jewish communities of Central and Western Europe.
Infuriated by Nazi antisemitism, Sarnoff began regular travel to Washington after Kristallnacht to meet with branches of the armed forces to plan RCA’s integration into the American defense buildup...
By Baruch Lytle
We are a yeshiva where you can feel comfortable to learn and to grow and to pursue goals even beyond learning, such as careers, dating and growing in observance. And we want our students to feel comfortable being themselves.
I contemplate how I am doing as a husband, father, son, brother, friend and Jew. I replay yesterday and see where I could improve for today.
Every morning, looking out over the East River as the first lifting of darkness and lightening of the sky explodes into the brightness of sunrise, I am reminded of this promise. It's not why I wake up then, but it's a nice bonus.
As for me? I like the thought that English mornings may twinkle, but Jewish mornings are filled with inquiry and discernment.
By Maayan Zik
Over the years, looking at these schedules, I have found activities such as meditation, gratitude journaling, morning pages, and exercise to be most common in these morning routines.
Before we become that lion roaring about, we pause and start with gratitude by saying Modeh Ani. We acknowledge all that we are fortunate to have in our lives: our homes, our families, and our very breath.
The piece de resistance was interviewing Naomi herself, who told the story about how she, after her mother’s urging, joined B’nei Akiva as a teenager and knew then she would live in Israel someday.
The title page tells of the interesting background to the writing of this work and the travails of the author that led to it.
Gompers, who had actively encouraged representatives of the Zionist movement to attend the convention with the hope that they would sway their fellow delegates, condemned the majority of the Jewish delegates who voted against the resolution.
As I study the pages of Gemara, the literature of Torah Sheb’al-Peh is transformed to a live discussion between Tannaim and Amoraim across generations...
Those of us who learn Gemara tend to talk about Gemara differently from the way people talk about other books. We don’t just read the Gemara; we learn it.
Gemara, where a statement made by one can and has affected millions, where a language of its own is needed to unlock millennia of history.
When I mentioned that we were newly married, the Pope remarked, jokingly, that he didn't remember seeing an invitation to our wedding.
My margins are filled with sources, questions, translations and attempted insights. You would never find such doodles or notes inside a Sefer Torah.
Indeed, your Esther scroll with case dates to 1953. It is unclear if Barton’s Chocolate Company kept re-releasing this Esther scroll every Purim throughout the 1950s and 60s...
Printing a sefer in centuries past took extraordinary effort and commitment; the stories behind the printing of many of these books tell tales of immense self-sacrifice.
By Eve Glover
Recently, Goldstein has noticed a dangerous trend of blatant antisemitism that is being sanctioned by medical institutions, universities and online platforms, where Jews are purged just for being Jewish.
By Alan Zeitlin
He said a leading area Democrat told them that the Kentucky governor had to cancel a trip to Israel to deal with the floods. She smiled and said, ‘I see Israel came to us,’ he recounted her saying.
Peretz doubted that an ancient tongue could be revived or that an ancient country could be reborn.
We see and project and imagine such possibility onto the blank slate of a baby's pudgy punim.
By Avi Ganz
Life begins with our willingness to use the faculties with which we've been entrusted, as well as to open ourselves up to input from the outside.
By Eli Lebowicz
Thank G-d, both of my kids were born healthy and we could bring them each home from the hospital after a couple of days. We checked the mailbox and amazingly there was already a bill for yeshiva tuition.
The best things in life – practicing Judaism, being married, having children – can be very difficult. But without the struggles, we wouldn’t appreciate the joys.
As I thought about how the child who stole our sleep had become the child who guarded our sleep, the verse from Tehillim echoed in my head: Those who sow in tears will reap in joy.
By Baruch Lytle
I think as long as the school is giving the student the appropriate tools to be a success in our society, they should have that level of independence.
This occasion, Mrs. Kass related years later, gave the impetus to the present-day Kosher Hotel arrangements for larger public functions.
By Alan Zeitlin
Ritch said that first, her running-mate, who was not Jewish and was elected president, first resigned after it was stated by students that he had made a racist micro-aggression and that then the pressure fell on her as she was hit with a bevy of attacks online.
Although he rejected their lifestyle, Pissarro never rejected his family, with whom he remained close and, notwithstanding their ordeal, Pissarro’s parents remained fundamentally Jewish and maintained at least some degree of Jewish fidelity and practice.
While there is a time for crying and mourning, at that same time we should know that with faith and resilience we can move forward with confidence that better times are coming.
Mourning over this massive loss of our physical conduit for the Shechinah’s presence on earth carries with it the divine impetus to effect change, to act in a way that merits the re-establishment of the Beis HaMikdash.
By Chaim Saiman
The stark contrast of dipping the hard bread in ash underscores how some of the most poignant messages of the fast are found not in the fasting but davka in the eating.
By Solly Hess
The ash, like the broken glass beneath the groom’s feet, is there for a meaningful purpose – to remember the destruction of the Beis HaMikdash.
There is an ancient custom, recorded in the Talmud of placing ashes on the head of the groom, in the place where tefillin is usually worn, as a way of fulfilling the verse If I do not place Jerusalem on the head of my rejoicing.
One article implores married men in the armed forces to write up a divorce in advance of their deployment in the event that they are missing in action.
Intriguingly, the first six notes of God Bless America are identical to a six-note melodic passage from When Mose with His Nose Leads the Band, a 1906 novelty song written by three Irish songwriters about a Jewish musician known as the Jewish Sousa.
Yirmiyahu, the navi of the Three Weeks, is the prophet who saw the brokenness of his people, of Hashem’s garden being taken over by the weeds of idolatry and evil.
August 28, 2026 
