יום שבת, ט״ז אלול תשפ״וSaturday, August 29, 2026
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The Magen David is a testament to our mission and our existence.
This past spring, the yeshiva undertook a renovation of the beit midrash. One of the major projects, apparently, was the removal of the Magen David pattern and these light fixtures, painting the ceiling white and installing beautiful chandeliers instead.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
By JJ Eleff
One of the things I love about the DansDeals forums is the diversity in our members – people coming together from all different walks of life. We frequently discuss our differences and educate each other on the beauty of our own traditions and customs.
By The Honorable Rachel Freier
Knowing that my children and grandchildren create another link in the chain makes tradition not just a word in my family but a way of life.
Adherence to traditions will fade away if there is no understanding of why we do what we do.
By Anat Coleman
At the height of the pandemic, for example, New Yorkers came together in a new tradition of making noise at 7 p.m. each evening in support of our essential workers.
If what you say is a received tradition we accept it. (But) if you have derived it logically then we have a response.
Maybe the most important lesson I learned during those years was from a rebbe who remarked that the most essential character trait developed in yeshiva by a ben Torah is curiosity.
While there is something to be said for being an eclectic learner, who in many ways pieced together my own derech, I deeply wish that I had started learning seriously earlier in my life, and that I had a derech in learning, particularly when it comes to Gemara.
By Rachel Kohn
With its derivation from the Hebrew word "to sit," yeshiva can be seen to connote continuity through hunkering down...
If next year’s tuition contract has given you sticker shock, remember that the challenge to afford tuition is nothing new.
This video highlighted something else. It was like an old couple, with decades of carpools and those daily pedestrian responsibilities of families, reading their first love letters. This video reminded us of that first love.
Would that we could sweat out impatience, addictions, anger, and our many other self-destructive behaviors that leave us worse off, closed off, and far off the mark!
By Maayan Zik
One of the most important schvitz-making projects of our lives is the journey to be more of ourselves.
Language academics created an entire discipline – phonoaesthetics – to figure out what makes a word pleasant-sounding. Idyllic appears on that list, and so does mellifluous and cellar door. Shvitz doesn’t.
Yiddish – and by extension, modern Hebrew – offers us yet another use for this term – the 'shvitzer,' or braggart, someone who's trying too hard and constantly showing off.
Hashem views the past, present, and future in synchronization. We too must broaden our scope.
August 28, 2026 
