יום ראשון, כ״ד אלול תשפ״וSunday, September 6, 2026
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By Jewish News Syndicate (JNS)
Communal leaders Avi and Becky Katz have established a multi-year, multi-million national initiative with NCSY, the flagship youth movement of the Orthodox Union.
By Jewish News Syndicate (JNS)
“Our hope is that this repository of ideas can serve as a launching pad for others,” said Rabbi Adir Posy.
By Jewish News Syndicate (JNS)
The country is facing a skyrocketing number of infections and an overstretched medical system.
By Jewish News Syndicate (JNS)
“The synagogue is the halachic and historic hub of Jewish life, and this program is designed to highlight that,” said OU executive vice president Rabbi Moshe Hauer.
The Ritz Carlton Manama will be under OU supervision.
By Josh Hasten
Rabbi Yissachar Krakowski and team prepared 300 kosher meals over the course of the two-day event in the United Arab Emirates.
Orthodox Union (OU) Kosher, the world’s largest kosher certification agency, has launched a free online kosher food and travel guide to help Jews follow dietary and ritual observance while away from home.
By Jewish News Syndicate (JNS)
Programming includes 14 Shabbatonim, in addition to cooking classes, bowling outings, family support groups and sensitivity training.
They discussed the need to increase and expand initiatives focused on Jewish education and identity in the Diaspora.
“You have to ask a reliable kosher agency who stands behind the ‘K’ on the product,” said Rabbi Moshe Berger, operations manager at the Orthodox Rabbinical Board.
There's nothing like spending Pesach in Jerusalem.
Amazing hotel in an amazing location along the Kinneret beach.
No organization (i.e.the OU) can excommunicate anyone. It does not, however, mean that our communities lack organizing principles. Those principles operate based on individual choice. People effectively expel synagogues not compliant with mainstream halacha.
By Jewish News Syndicate (JNS)
The OU has established parameters for a three-year period during which the umbrella body for American Orthodox congregations will work to bring its member synagogues who employ female clergy into compliance with OU standards, which stipulate that a woman cannot serve as a rabbi.
Let's say the OU were to expel a synagogue, or 4, what practical difference would it make?
Rabbi David Fohrman discusses how to make Chumash come alive for your kids on OU's Torah in the City.
How do we expand leadership roles and titles that the OU and its Rabbinical Panel recommend while developing and continuing a halakhic conversation about the exact parameters of those roles and titles?
By Jewish News Syndicate (JNS)
The Orthodox Union, B'nai Brith and the Houston Federation are pitching in.
The OU criticized White House and State Dept. Spokespeople for suggesting Jews buying houses in Jerusalem is 'provocative.'
A dozen rabbis and a Jewish gun club are extremely critical of the position on gun control taken by the RCA and the OU.
The news that the Chief Rabbinate withdrew kosher supervisors from Turkish plants in the face of Israel’s war in Gaza is part of what some kashrus organizations call “working in a more dangerous world.” They recall the murder of two kosher supervisors in Mumbai in December 2008, and extremists have recently threatened more terror in […]
Inevitably when tragedies like this happen there is a sudden burst of Achdus. Tragedies unite.
New York NCSY, the OU, Bnei Akiva and RCA are launching a "virtual vigil" to bring the kidnapped teens home.
By JTA
The famous Girl Guides cookies now have the OU approval as being kosher thanks to an all-Orthodox troop in Canada, but their chocolate mint cookies still are on the forbidden list. All Girl Scout cookies in the United States have been kosher for at least 20 years, said organization spokesman Stewart Goodbody. When the 31 […]
Now quinoa is OK for Pesach says the OU.
On certain public policy issues, Orthodox opinion stands in sharp contrast to the views of most American Jews.
By Jewish News Syndicate (JNS)
Wonder Bread, fresh off its post-bankruptcy revival, will get kosher certification in the New York area from the Orthodox Union (OU), according to an OU bulletin. The kosher Wonder Bread won’t be sold everywhere, but approved products will bear the OU’s symbol on their packaging. Previously, Wonder Bread was certified by the Triangle-K, which is […]
By JTA
Approximately 90 percent of the $10 million in funding for non-profit organizations announced by the Department of Homeland Security to help nonprofit organizations protect themselves from terrorism went to Jewish institutions this year. The total amount of grants, announced Aug. 29, is slightly up from last year’s $9.7 million, while the total Preparedness Grant Program […]
The proper response for almost the entire population of planet Earth to these eternal questions about man-made meat is “I am not qualified to render an opinion on this matter.”
By JTA
It’s not enough that kosher ersatz bacon is on the market. Now it’s kosher cheeseburgers, from “meat” grown in a lab, waiting for the cheese. The lab-grown burger cost only $325,000 to make. Two to go?
Israeli restaurants and hotels are more interested n seeking kosher certification from the American-based Orthodox Union (OU) in order to attract foreign tourists, according to the Kosher Today newsletter. It said that many American Jewish tourists generally are more familiar with the OU than Israeli rabbinic certifications. The OU operates in Israel in an office […]
Star K says quinoa is kosher for Passover. The OU says it is not, and once again the principle of keeping a mitzvah is getting lost in the argument over who is in charge.
Shabbat candles must be lit by (and preferably 18 minutes before) sunset. Once it is twilight, the time between sunset and nightfall known as bein hashmashot, it is too late to light. Bein hashmashot begins when the sun sets below the horizon and is no longer visible.
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.”
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.
However remote the prospect of acquittal, a Jew must never give up. God commands us to challenge indictment with prayer. And the rabbis urge us to confront sentencing with hunger strikes. And so, the Midrash tells us, when Moses stood before God, at a loss for words with which to defend the sin of the golden calf, God Himself donned a tallit, took to the prayer stand, and showed Moses how to pray and what to say:
Prayer is always an avenue to God. But in the month of Elul, the last month of the Jewish year, and during the ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, God lends a particularly sympathetic ear.
There is a fundamental difference between the times set for reciting the Shema and all other prayers. Whereas our sages linked the times for prayers to the times of the Temple sacrifices, the time for reciting Shema is fixed by the Torah itself – “beshochbechah uvekumechah” – when you lie down and when you get up.
By dvora
The New York Times once asked Rabbi Moshe Feinstein how he became a posek hador, one of the generation’s foremost authorities on Jewish law. Rabbi Feinstein answered that, “people came and asked me questions and they liked what I said and it was accepted, and then more people came and eventually I became widely accepted as a posek.”
One does not have to be superstitious to recognize facts. It is a historical fact that the period between the Seventeenth of Tammuz and the Tenth of Av was plagued by recurring tragedies.
The korban tamid was offered up every morning and every afternoon, including Shabbat. The korbanot tamid served as the bookends for all the other korbanot that were brought during the day. No other offering could be brought before the korban tamid of the morning or after the korban tamid of the afternoon.
At about 4 a.m. on cold and damp autumn mornings in London, Dad would try to wake us in time for Selichot, the pre-Jewish New Year dawn prayers. As we heard Dad’s footsteps mounting the stairs, my brother and I would hide under our covers and mutter our displeasure at being disturbed.
In addition to karet, there is another type of premature death at the hand of God known as “mita bedei shamayim.”
Each morning at about 7:10 a.m. my mother, still in her housecoat and slippers, would wake me for school. One wintry Monday morning I opened my eyes to see her leaning over my bed. She was in hat and coat and her hands were cold from the weather outside.
It's 1 p.m. on Friday, Erev Pesach. The rabbi had already sold the chametz at 10 a.m. But I forgot to sell mine. Now the synagogue office is closed and I can't get hold of the form the rabbi uses to sell the chametz. The Torah requires me to remove all chametz from my house on Pesach. But I just cannot bring myself to throw out that Glenfiddich. Is there a way the whisky can remain in my house during Pesach, and would I be able to drink it after Pesach?
If you pay only $5 or if you creep back, retrieve your $10 bill and make off with the money and the flowers. Doing that would be a breach of trust.
By Orthodox Union and Rabbinical Council of America
The Orthodox Union and the Rabbinical Council of America urge their member synagogues and member rabbis to respond to this time of formidable challenge for Jews around the world with programs of tefilla and divrei hitorerut, prayer and words of inspiration, in a manner appropriate to the severity of the situation.
The act of temurah, consecrating another animal in place of an already consecrated animal, incurs the punishment of malkot - lashes. This is somewhat surprising. There is a halachic rule that a prohibition that does not involve an overt act does not incur the punishment of malkot – “lav she’einbBo ma’aseh, ein lokin alav.” Why then does a person incur malkot?
Batei arei chomah are structures (of at least six to eight square feet) in towns consisting of at least three courtyards with two buildings each, with a predominantly Jewish population – provided that such towns were surrounded by a wall in the time of Joshua even though they may no longer be surrounded by a wall at the time of the sale or buyback.
After its conquest by Joshua, the land of Israel was divided into twelve equal parts in accordance with the number of the tribes of Israel. Each male member of each tribe that actually left Egypt was entitled to a piece of land equal in size to the total size allocated to his whole tribe divided by the number of men of twenty or over in his tribe that left Egypt.
A person’s reputation precedes him. A bad reputation prejudices any chance of a successful encounter. Damaging a person’s reputation is tantamount to booby-trapping human relations before they can blossom into happy relationships.
Some college students use their winter break between terms to relax, fly to warm climates and in general recover from the academic burdens of the fall semester. Others study how to slaughter chickens according to kosher law.
There are two different types of vows, nedarim, mentioned in the Torah. The first, which is the subject of Tractate Nedarim, is the prohibitive vow, nidrei issur, pursuant to which a person utters a vow not to do an action, which but for the vow would have been permitted.
Pidyon ha’ben, like brit milah, is primarily the responsibility of the father. A brit milah must be performed on the eighth day of the child’s birth, unless it would endanger the life of the child. Pidyon ha’ben must be performed on the 31st day of the child’s birth. Neither ceremony may be delayed beyond its prescribed time unless there is some halachic justification to do so.
By Maury Litwak
There are two types of politicians we encounter when advocating to relieve our community’s tuition burden through the use of government funding: those who claim to be 100 percent behind us, and those who claim to be 100 percent against us. What’s interesting is that politicians in both categories do not seem to understand what “100 percent” means.
A son who is not himself a kohen or a Levi, firstborn to a Jewish mother who is not the daughter of a kohen or a Levi, has the status of a bechor and must be redeemed through a ceremony known as pidyon ha’ben. The performance of the pidyon ha’ben ceremony, which should take place […]
September 4, 2026 
