יום ראשון, כ״ד אלול תשפ״וSunday, September 6, 2026
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By JTA
A Jewish man was attacked and rendered unconscious in a Paris metro, a local watchdog reported.
This is one of those issues that ought to be shocking, but about which nothing is done. For years — I’ve written about this before — the Muslim waqf that controls the Temple Mount has been systematically destroying archaeological artifacts of Jewish provenance at the site.
Deborah Pinto, wife of Rabbi Yoshiyahu Pinto, who is suspected, along with her husband, of trying to bribe a senior police officer, attempted suicide on Sunday by taking pills. Mrs. Pinto, who was picked up for questioning last Thursday, together with her husband, and was released with him under restrictive conditions, is in satisfactory condition at the Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer.
Arlen Specter, U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania 1961 - 2011, has died. Specter was 82 years old. Specter is survived by his wife, Joan, his son Stephen, his son Shanin, daughter-in-law Tracey, and 5 granddaughters. Specter was Jewish and over his lifetime belonged to several different synagogues. His granddaughters all attended a Conservative Jewish day school in the Philadelphia suburbs.
Vice President Joe Biden recently spoke at two of the largest retirement villages in South Florida, Boca Raton’s Century Village and Tamarac’s Kings Point. Biden, of course, was representing Barack Obama’s bid for reelection in the forthcoming presidential election.
By Yosef Rabin
Over the Sukkot holiday, 12 Jews were arrested and many more were harassed and denied religious rights on the Temple Mount over the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. Eight of the arrests were for prayer crimes and three were for peacefully protesting the policies of discrimination and denigration. Here's a day by day report.
By JTA
Sixty years after Perry Brickman was thrown out of Emory University’s dental school simply for being Jewish, the retired oral surgeon from Atlanta went back to the school on Wednesday to receive an official apology.
This two-part series tells the story of Jewish exodus – a story of dispossession and torn identities in one of the most hotly-debated chapters of history in the Middle East – and how the remaining diasporas are surviving in hostile Arab countries.
By JTA
Israel’s defense minister, Ehud Barak, has ordered authorities to allow the Jewish owners of a building in Hebron to move into it.
By JTA
Emory University issued a formal apology to Jewish dental students who attended the school between 1948 and 1961 and faced anti-Semitism. University President James Wagner delivered the apology at a special event Wednesday night that included 32 former students, now in their 70s and 80s, of the Atlanta school. The students had received failing grades, […]
A new video explaining the Jewish right to build in Judea and Samaria.
In 1648 and 1649 Bogdan Chmelnitzky and his hordes of Cossack warriors perpetrated an annihilation campaign against the Jews of Poland and the Ukraine. Almost 100,000 Jews and 300 communities perished at the hands of these murderous mobs. All of the Jews, including infants, were targeted for murder; the general populaces nearly always joined in […]
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
It is the most famous, majestic and influential opening of any book in literature: “In the beginning, G-d created the heavens and the earth.” What is surpassingly strange is the way Rashi – most beloved of all Jewish commentators – begins his commentary:
Some 30 years ago a certain well-known rabbi in Manhattan came to Israel and brought much of his congregation with him, to a barren ridge where our forefathers and foremothers traveled to and from Jerusalem and Hebron. The rabbi and his followers left the ravages of assimilation and headed to the unknown. The rabbi swiftly gathered in Jews from all over the world and all over Israel to the cozy town of Efrat.
We have long been dismayed by the trust some prominent Jewish groups place in the established non-evangelical Protestant Christian denominations. Aside from some occasional and perfunctory conciliatory statements on minor matters offered by the denominational leaders, the relationship has never become a true dialogue but rather an embarrassing, self-conscious cry for acceptance from insecure Jews.
“Americans who support Israel should take the president at his word.” So wrote Haim Saban recently in The New York Times, claiming President Obama was fully committed to the Jewish state. But is that true? Should we take Obama at his word? No, not when Israel confronts the threat of a nuclear Iran.
Several attacks on Jews over the Sukkot holiday across France have exemplified a whopping 45 percent reported increase in anti-Semitic attacks in the country in the first eight months of 2012.
By JTA
Google introduced a new online historical collection of digitized material, highlighting several Jewish themes, events and institutional partners in its first wave of exhibits.
By Tzvi Fishman
Browsing through a news website, I noticed that the World Series is just two weeks away. I haven’t followed baseball for 30 years, ever since making aliyah. When I lived in America, and thought I was an American, I loved baseball, like everyone else. But baseball doesn’t interest me anymore. I don’t even know what teams are in the running this year. The World Series has absolutely nothing to do with the Redemption of Am Yisrael, so who cares? But maybe we can borrow a few metaphors from baseball to help America Jews understand that Judaism in the Diaspora is the Little Leagues.
By JTA
French police found an explosives lab that they say was used by a "jihadist cell" in the bombing of a kosher store near Paris. Francois Molins of the Paris prosecutor’s office said at a news conference Wednesday that the firearms and “all the elements necessary to produce explosive devices” were discovered the previous day at […]
By JTA
Robert J. Lefkowitz, a Jewish physician and path-breaking biochemist from New York, has won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
By Chabad.org
After a court ruling, that brought the future of Germany's Jewish community into question, and reminded some of a darker time in German history, proposed legislation to bring resolution. After months of debate, today the German cabinet decided to establish a new legislation which will clearly enable and support the religious practice of circumcision. "It […]
By Tzvi Fishman
If the recent Sukkot overdose of Shabbat, followed by two days of Yom Tov, and another Shabbat followed by two more days of Yom Tov, isn’t enough to get Diaspora Jews to move to Israel, with its force-feeding of gefilta fish day-after-day, until gefilta fish jelly drips out of people’s noses and horseradish pours out of their ears, I don’t know what it’s going to take until Diaspora Jews are fed up with practicing Judaism in a jar.
Twenty years, countless conversations, and hundreds of Friday night Shabbat dinners later, Cory today is a much-loved honorary member of the American Jewish community, regularly lecturing at Synagogues and Jewish conferences across the country. More significant, Cory has challenged the Jewish community to live up to its Biblical calling to serve as ‘a light unto the nations.’ In many of the speeches we deliver together he asks the Jewish participants if they study the weekly Parsha, if they honor the commandments, and cherish the Sabbath. What allows an African-American Christian Mayor to challenge Jewish leaders to deepen their Jewish commitment? Because those same leaders are amazed at Cory’s knowledge of Judaism and appreciation of the Jewish contribution to civilization. (Watch video)
A group of over 20 Jews consisting of men, women, children, and elderly returning to the Maale HaZeitim neighborhood on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem on the Sabbath were attacked by a group of Arabs hurling rocks and cinder blocks.
By JTA
Police in Budapest have arrested two young men after they allegedly assaulted the leader of a Jewish congregation.
By JTA
The Dutch government is drafting a decree that would give it veto power over anyone who wants to practice ritual slaughter, or sh'chitah, in the Netherlands.
Question: May one support kosher sechach in a sukkah by placing it on a davar she’mekabel tumah, an item that can receive impurity (i.e., metal)?
By dvora
Three thousand years ago, King David reigned over the Jewish state in our eternal capital, Jerusalem. I say that to all those who proclaim that the Jewish state has no roots in our region and that it will soon disappear.
Warnings of additional Arab violence convince police to close the Temple Mount to Jewish visitors.
Mordechai Ben David, Chaim Yisrael, Udi Davidi and Shlomo Katz performed to a packed audience on Wednesday in the Jewish biblical city of Hebron, burial ground of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, matriarchs Sarah, Rebecca, and Leah, and Jewish ancestors and notables Jesse, Ruth, and Avner.
A group of 30 Jews who regularly ascend to the Temple Mount after conducting ritual preparations in order to pray and assert a Jewish presence at Judaism’s holiest site were attacked in the morning on Thursday by a group of Arabs shouting out to “Kill the Jews!”
By Tzvi Fishman
During the reign of King Solomon, the Nation of Israel was at its prime. We lived in peace in our own homeland. A Jewish government ruled over the country from the majestic city of Jerusalem. All of the people gathered for the Festivals at the Temple three times a year. Jewish law went forth from the Sanhedrin. Prophets communicated the word of the Lord to the Nation and the world. A powerful Jewish army guarded the country’s borders. Torah was studied in great academies of learning. Hebrew was spoken on the street. The leaders of foreign nations flocked to Jerusalem to pay tribute to the Jews.
The U.S. covenant with the Jewish State dates back to Columbus Day, which is celebrated around Sukkot (October 8). According to "Columbus Then and Now" (Miles Davidson, 1997, p. 268), Columbus arrived in America on Friday afternoon, October 12, 1492, the 21st day of the Jewish month of Tishrey, the Jewish year 5235, the 7th day of Sukkot, Hoshaa'na' Rabbah, which is a day of universal deliverance and miracles. Hosha (הושע) is the Hebrew word for “deliverance” and Na’ (נא) is the Hebrew word for "please." The numerical value of Na’ is 51, which corresponds to the celebration of Hoshaa'na' Rabbah on the 51st day following Moses' ascension to Mt. Sinai.
I am a Zionist. That means that I support a Jewish state in its historical homeland. I oppose efforts to change it into another Arab state, or to kill and disperse its Jewish inhabitants. It does not mean that I think that Jews are superior to Arabs or anyone else.
Three more Jewish men have been arrested on Temple Mount on Wednesday, in addition to the two—including Manhigut Yehudit leader Moshe Feiglin—arrested on Tuesday, Arutz 7 reports. Rabbi Yehuda Leibman, director of the Od Yosef Chai Yeshiva, was arrested Wednesday morning for praying on the site of two ancient Jewish temples. Also arrested Wednesday were […]
By Tzvi Fishman
To rectify the blemish caused by galut, the Diaspora Jew has to stop being in exile and join the ingathered. He has to actualize the words of his daily prayers, “And gather us together from the four corners of the earth” by getting on a plane.
For 19 years Yerushalayim was a city divided, cut in two by the 1948 armistice line. After Israel’s War of Independence on November 30, 1948, at the time of the official cease-fire, Moshe Dayan sat with Abdallah Tell and UN mediators, slicing up Yerushalayim. Using a map scaled at 1:20,000, each side used a different coloured wax pen to delineate the furthest point under its control. Israel drew a red line and Jordan a green line. This is the origin of the phrase used to describe land that is “behind the green line.”
Yet another explosion rocks Malmo Sweden, this one targeting the Jewish Community directly.
No doubt, it's hard for people to give up their lifelong attachments and identity. But there are moments in history when a turning point arrives, and those with eyes to see and ears to hear recognize it. Many Jews have made political liberalism their religion and personal identity and the Democrat Party their unexamined home and comfort zone. But everything changed early September.
By Tzvi Fishman
One of Rav Kook's public proclamations, sent out all over the Diaspora, years before the Holocaust, was entitled, “The Great Call”: "To the Land of Israel, gentlemen, to the Land of Israel! Let us utter this appeal in one voice, in a great and never-ending cry."
Transcript of Prime Minister Netanyahu's speech in the UN on Thursday, September 27, 2012.
By Gil Lavie, Tazpit News Agency
Defying historical fact, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad continued his existential verbal attacks on the State of Israel, claiming Israel has no historical basis in the Middle East Region.
An article in the Baltimore Sun featured the conflict fans of the Baltimore Orioles have with the yearly Yom Kippur observance, showcasing how lovers of baseball keep their finger on the pulse of sports as the Day of Atonement takes place.
The Jewish cemetery south of Prague has been vandalized, with over 26 tombstones being knocked over, according to Czech police.
Even Moses, who spoke with God one on One, was not allowed to see Him during his lifetime. “You cannot see my face, for no man shall see me and live.”
Question: Should a person recite kiddush standing or sitting on Sukkot? If he stands, should he sit down after saying the berachah of leshev ba’sukkah or remain standing?
The oldest Jewish settlements arose in Cape Town, Kimberley, Durban, Port Elizabeth, and Burgersdorp. The settlements in Grahamstown and Graaf Reinet have dissolved. There was a (Jewish) community established in Cape Town, which is the oldest is South Africa, while in Johannesburg, which today houses the largest Jewish settlement in the country, the settlement was first built there in 1887, when about 88 settlers came in from England and Australia to develop the mineral wealth of the land.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
Yom Kipper, the Day of Atonement, is the supreme moment of Jewish time, a day of fasting and prayer, introspection and self-judgment. At no other time are we so sharply conscious of standing before God, of being known by Him. But it begins in the strangest of ways.
Goldstein was raised in a Jewish-conservative household in Philadelphia, attending the Jewish elementary school of Solomon Schechter and Camp Rama in the summers. He chose to go to the Quaker Friends’ Central High School in part because of the school’s focus on athletics, but also in order to broaden his horizons.
How well are Jews - and non-Jews - doing with regard to the Jewish state? If the question focuses on the highbrow world, and particularly its predominant persuasion of liberalism (or what is still called by that name), the answer that emerges from Edward Alexander's new book is: not very well.
In its September newsletter, the New Israel Fund (NIF) urged Israelis to examine their behavior (“cheshbon nefesh”), declaring “We have been telling you for some time about the upsurge in hatred and incitement in Israel…”
Yom Kippur is observed on the tenth day of the Jewish month of Tishrey, whose astrological sign is Libra (♎). Libra symbolizes key themes of Yom Kippur: scales, justice, balance, truth, symmetry, sensitivity and optimism. Libra is ruled by the planet Venus (Noga, נגה, in Hebrew), which reflects divine light and love of the other person. The numerical value of Venus, נגה, is 58 just like the numerical value of אזן, which is the Hebrew root of “balance” and “scale.”
Every year, young soldiers from overseas are enlisted into the Israeli Defense Forces through the Garin Tzabar program. The distance from their families and friends combined with the acclimation to their new country makes their service especially challenging. This year, however, at least for five pairs of brothers from the United States and Australia, the experience should be somewhat less difficult.
By Moshe Herman
Yishai and Rabbi Yohanan Danziger discuss recent Shabbat visitors, the Jewish need to remain positive, and America's weakening grip on the Jewish People.
A private meeting was scheduled in New York on Monday between Abu Mazen, who had come to attend United Nations deliberations, and several influential members of the American Jewish community. The meeting had been arranged by Jewish media tycoon Mort Zuckerman, who is considered close to Prime Minister Netanyahu.
By Jamie Sloane, Israel Campus Beat
When Joanna Lieberman was preparing for graduation from Cornell University five years ago, her career options were unsettling.
Every September Ahmadinejad accomplishes the unique feat of calling for a new holocaust while simultaneously denying the original ever took place. And do you know what the Jews do about it? Nothing.
In excerpts of an interview published by Yisrael HaYom newspaper, Defense Minister Ehud Barak proposed a unilateral withdrawal from most of Judea and Samaria, requiring tens of thousands of Jews to leave their homes or remain under the sovereignty of the Palestinian Authority.
Sadly, it appears that the Israeli foreign policy establishment has given up on convincing the international community as to the essential rightness of the Zionist enterprise. Rather, by attempting to push the issue of Jewish “refugees” from Arab lands to the top of the U.N.'s agenda, Israelis abdicating the moral high ground in favor of sinking into a battle of victimhood narratives with the Palestinians.
Notions of animal cruelty do not apply to fish under Jewish law, so by using a fish for the Kapparot ritual one would avoid causing unnecessary pain to an animal yet still have the benefit of using a live creature for the ritual.
The way of Meah Shearim is the way of the Mafia. Not civilization.
By Daniel Eisenstadt and Michael Granoff
The greatest Jewish success story in a quarter century has become unknown to many in less than a generation. On Dec. 6, 1987, when Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev arrived in Washington, more than a quarter-million American Jews – Democrats and Republicans, observant and secular, and individuals representing the entire spectrum of Israeli politics – gathered on the National Mall with a single unified message as old as the Exodus story: “Let our people go!”
Question: A basic Jewish belief is that everyone ultimately will be judged. This final judgment is called din v’cheshbon, judgment and reckoning – see Avot 3:1. What is the difference between these two terms? What is din and what is cheshbon?
In six weeks, Americans will be going to the polls in what could prove to be one of the most fateful elections in decades.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
By now Moses had given 612 commands to the Israelites. But there was one further instruction he still had to give, the last of his life, the final mitzvah in the Torah: “Now therefore write this song and teach it to the people of Israel. Put it in their mouths, that this song may be My witness against the people of Israel” (Deuteronomy 31: 19).
By Anav Silverman, Tazpit News Agency
According to a study by Hebrew University’s Professor Sergio DellaPergola, the global Jewish population reached 13.75 million in the past year, with an increase of 88,000 people. Israel’s Maariv newspaper published excerpts of the study last week, reporting that one out of every 514 people in the world is Jewish, less than 0.2 percent of mankind.
One of my searing early memories from Israel is a visit nearly four decades ago to the Ghetto Fighters Museum in the Beit Lohamei Hagetaot kibbutz. The world’s first Holocaust museum, it was built soon after the Independence War by survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.
By dvora
With memories of the Siyum HaShas still fresh in people’s minds, many Jews around the world have been purchasing a Tractate Berachot in order to take part in the 13th cycle of Daf Yomi, the daily study of one daf of Talmud Bavli.
"There was an attack inside a kosher supermarket in Sarcelles at lunchtime by two persons dressed in black who lobbed a device," said Richard Prasquier, head of France's main Jewish council CRIF. On Wednesday, a satirical French weekly published naked cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
Being forced to pay taxes does not make us more virtuous people. If it did, our founding fathers would have thanked George III for his coercion.
By Shiraz Maher
Fears for the future of religious minorities in Egypt were accentuated earlier this month when it was announced that the last synagogue in the country would be closed down. The Eliyahu Hanavi Synagogue, which had operated in Alexandria, was the last functioning center of Jewish life in the country. It is now clear that its cavernous halls, built in the nineteenth century, will not be open to worshippers hoping to mark Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur services this year.
Former Israeli Consul General in the U.S. Yoram Ettinger offers a series of points regarding Rosh Hashanah.
After an expulsion and a lengthy 5 year battle, the Jerusalem District Court finally made a ruling on "Beit Hashalom" in Hebron. Judge Baram ordered the State to prepare to return the building to its rightful Jewish owners. In 2007, the building was purchased from its Arab owners. At the time, the Arab sellers, despite […]
The Palestinians have asked the World Heritage Committee (WHC) of UNESCO to recognize Battir, a village about 5 miles west of Bethlehem, as a World Heritage Site and add it to the 936 sites already maintained by UNESCO. The city's original name was Betar, the last fortress of Bar Kochba and the name of Jabotinsky's Zionist youth movement.
The Orthodox Union and Jewish Leadership Coalition for School Choice (JLCSC) are pleased to announce a joint nonpartisan voter registration campaign in Hollywood and Boca Raton, South Florida.
Why is Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, so different from other Jewish holidays? On the face of it, it does not seem to follow any pattern. It is celebrated for two days, not only in the Diaspora but also in Israel. Yet the Sages refer to the two days of Rosh Hashanah as one long day – yoma arichta.
By the summer of 1947, British Mandatory Palestine was in flames. Jewish underground fighters waged guerrilla warfare against the British administration. Refugee ships, such as the S.S. Exodus, challenged London's refusal to let Holocaust survivors enter the Holy Land. A United Nations committee visited the region and returned with a plan to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states.
On the issue of demographics, the numbers make things quite clear that even before modern Zionism began, the city was Jewish and only Muslim repressive policies artificially kept the numbers of Jews down before the mid-19th century.
The Shi'a ethnic-religious tradition of pretending to be Sunni in order to avoid violent attack, even death, has resulted in a culture of deception which continues today, especially in Iran. This is reflected in Iran's dealings with the International Atomic Energy Agency and the West regarding its nuclear program and more recently when it hosted the Non-Aligned Movement conference in its capital. At the conference, Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi - a Sunni - attacked Iran's ally Bashir al-Assad and his regime for slaughtering its own citizens in Syria as well as Assad’s unnamed supporters, i.e. Iran. Iran purposefully mistranslated the speech in Farsi to make it seem that Morsi was talking about Bahrain, not Syria.
Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-Manhattan/Brooklyn) recently traveled to Israel where he joined Israeli and international leaders to call for better recognition of the rights of Jewish refugees from Arab countries. “I am proud to have visited Israel this week to speak about the absolute necessity of recognizing the plight of Jewish refugees from Arab countries,” said […]
Anyone who reads the text of the New York City Department of Health’s proposed rule regarding metzitzah b’peh will immediately notice that two fundamental concerns have been virtually ignored in all of the public debate over the measure.
President Obama may be enjoying a slight, if likely temporary, bounce in the polls this week. But one of the surveys showing him with a lead in a tight race over Mitt Romney also provides a breakdown of the data that confirms predictions that he is losing up to a quarter of the Jewish votes he got in 2008.
You've seen the scene before – the congregants are silent, the tension can be cut with a butter knife, all eyes are peeled on the bimah in the center, two blessings are uttered, and the silence is pierced….by the most primitive horn one could find!
By Zev Hurwitz, Israel Campus Beat
A report recommended that UC consider banning all hate speech from its nine campuses.
"Politically conservative Jewish students on campus were being treated like outcasts, even within the traditional Jewish campus organizations."
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, is a kind of clarion call, a summons to the Ten Days of Penitence that culminate in the Day of Atonement. The Torah calls it “the day when the horn is sounded,” and its central event is the sounding of the shofar.
By Chabad.org
More than 280 graduates, their family members and friends joined together at the Rabbinical College of America in New Jersey to celebrate the hard work and dedication of a group of rising young Jewish leaders. Some 14 countries were represented in the student body of newly-minted rabbis, who over the last few years have been […]
Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie, the former president of the Union of Reform Judaism, has argued that the reform movement should look to Orthodox Judaism for guidance. Harry Maryles argues that this provides an important kiruv opportunity.
We need to understand that a universalist civilization will not survive a contest with a tribalist one. If we don’t value our civilization, who will?
Haim Saban, a proud Jew, staunch supporter of Israel, and noted philanthropist, nevertheless parses President Obama’s record on Israel in The New York Times to deliver a sanitized rendition of a President whose relationship with the Jewish state is unreliable at best and troubling at worst, writes Congressional candidate Rabbi Shmuley Boteach.
Assemblywoman Rhoda Jacobs recently met with the editorial board of The Jewish Press at the newspaper’s New York office. Jacobs, who is the Assembly member for New York State’s 42nd Assembly District, has been in the Assembly since 1979. Her district, which is very ethnically diverse, is primarily made of Flatbush neighborhoods and part of Midwood.
In two weeks millions of Jews will cry out, "Next Year in Jerusalem" and millions more will cry out, "Vote for Obama." And we shall see whose faith will prevail.
A new poll released at an international conference on Justice for Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries shows that a great proportion of Arab Israelis (54%) than Jewish Israelis (48%) believe issues pertaining to Jewish refugees from Arab countries deserve as much attention as those pertaining to Arab refugees from Israel’s war of independence.
The global Jewish population grew by more than 88,000 people over the past year, and now stands at 13.75 million, according to a new study published y Professor Sergio DellaPergola of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
By Anav Silverman, Tazpit News Agency
The Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) has launched a new campaign to mark the expulsion of Jews from Arab countries, called "I am a Refugee", which seeks to bring the forgotten and often overlooked stories of Jewish refugees from Arab countries to both Israel and the international community.
An arson attack at the Achla Pita Grill in Hollywood, Florida may be linked to an arson committed at the same strip mall a year ago against another Jewish business.
By JTA
Anti-Semitism in Venezuela has spiked during the electoral race for president between a Catholic man of Jewish descent and President Hugo Chavez, according to a new report. State media and supporters of Chavez, who has ruled the country for the past 14 years, regularly “vilify” his opponent, Henrique Capriles Radonski, derisively referring to his Jewish […]
Rejecting something with knowledge is one thing, but most Jews in the world today have essentially rejected a life of Jewish observance with very little book or experiential knowledge.
September 4, 2026 
