You may have noticed that sometimes my message titles have pop culture references. Today I am referencing, of course, Elvis Presley. I reference him because even though he was omnipresent while he was alive and a fixture in popular music, his influence still remains, in many ways still infor…
Those of you familiar with Bob Marley will recognize the refrain. Stand up for your rights. Don't give up the fight.
Earlier this week, I stood up with 3,000 of my neighbors in Teaneck outside of Congregation Bnai Yeshurun, when a few dozen anti-Zionist agitators came to disrupt an event fo…
This week, I received a bit of “anti-fan mail” for a previous newsletter, within which I stated, as part of a longer discussion of Israel’s justified campaign in Gaza that “Israel has an obligation to do more and better to protect non combatants.” (words, I should add, that I used …
Almost 400 years ago, in 1629, one of my ancestors, Rabbi Yom Tov Lippman Heller (also known as the Tosefot Yom Tov, after his well known commentary on the Mishnah) was arrested in Vienna, where he had become the Jewish community’s Chief Rabbi in 1625.
Rabbi Yom Tov was one of the preemin…
The name, for many of us, evokes the embodiment of evil attack, unwarranted persecution, and unprovoked violence that our Torah commands us to remember and never forget. It is our anti-talisman, that which we hold up to remind ourselves that our existence has historically and in the present …
