יום רביעי, כ״ד חשוון תשפ״זWednesday, November 4, 2026
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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.
The narrow strait, however, is not a roadblock; on the contrary, it is a mechanism for increased productivity.
I sometimes wonder what it must have felt like to be him: to not just believe but to know you have important words to share – words from G-d no less – but the people don’t want to hear it.
It seems from chapter 27, one of the sharpest chapters in his book, that the people of his age simply could not imagine that they would lose their hold on Eretz Yisrael.
Today, 2,500 years later, Yirmiyahu is welcomed in our happiest moments, as we sing: Od Yishama, his song of Yerushalayim.
In his introduction he writes of the many troubles that befell him, starting with his having narrowly escaped his home in Alt-Ofen during wartime, leaving behind his books, belongings and worldly possessions.
On September 10, 2001, Milstein attended a screening of the documentary Jihad in America, which showed radical Islamists chanting Death to America! from inside American mosques. When I woke up the next morning, it was 9/11.
There is little evidence of communal Jewish life or rabbinical leadership until the middle of the nineteenth century, when German Jews began a large American emigration to escape Germany’s tyrannical antisemitic laws.
As an influencer who speaks to many women on a daily basis, I find myself saying "oy" when someone shares an unfortunate situation with me. I guess it's my version of "oy gevalt" without the gevalt.
Some of the comments complained that religious Jews should not be speaking about this in public.
You can say things like, “It’s “mamesh a gevalt.” In this context it means wow – that is an unbelievable thing.
By Hillel Fuld
It could mean that someone is alarmed or realized something very bad. Alternatively, it could be used to express gratitude to Hashem.
By Keshet Starr
According to Webster’s dictionary, gevalt is an expression of alarm, while oy indicates exasperation or dismay.
Rabbi Steinberg also points out that while most people familiar with Hebrew are aware of the three-letter shoresh, there are also opinions that there is an entire category of two-letter roots as well.
A previous owner of the book apparently found several passages of the book not to his liking, and these passages were neatly burned out.
The Jews of Europe, who had their own dreams of a land that they heard of – i.e., Eretz Yisrael, about which their mothers had sung to them in two thousand years of lullabies – were unable to fly “over the rainbow” or go anywhere else.
By Rabbanit Dr. Adena Berkowitz
Look at the bustling city it has become – with yeshivas, seminaries, mosdos, restaurants, apartments, hotels, archeology come to life and the kaleidoscope of Jews, Sabras and those ingathered from all over the world.
Walking up Rachel Imeinu Street it is hard to feel lonely. For thousands of years, Rachel has been masterfully offering solace to lonely, wandering Jews.
Calling it home is perhaps the greatest gift I ever gave myself (with Hashem’s help, of course), one that I receive anew each day.
When we had to return to the U.S. 12 years later there was an ache in my soul.
Created in 1979 as a tribute to Simon Rockower by his sons, the Simon Rockower Awards committee seek out only the epitome of successful, honorable Jewish journalism.
While the student body at many of the major American yeshivas was slowly growing in the post-war period, the Selective Service draft resulted in a great portion of the students continuing their studies indefinitely to avoid the draft.
With the loss of the Alma oil fields – which Egypt has renamed the Shuab Ali fields – Israel’s energy costs in the first year after the agreement increased by about one-third to about $2 billion, even though Israel had adopted policies to reduce oil consumption.
October 30, 2026 
