Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, billionaire Bill Gates, former Harvard President Lawrence Summers, ex-presidents Clinton and Trump, filmmaker Woody Allen, international lawyer Alan Dershowitz, leading left-winger Noam Chomsky, Bard College president Leon Botstein: a...
The average price paid to climb Mt. Everest ““ for permits, equipment and guides ““Â is between $35,000 and $45,000. And hundreds have died in that exploit. What impels people to undertake so expensive...
With the passing Tuesday evening of Rav Moshe Grylak z”l, we lost an unsung giant of our generation. And I lost a friend and mentor. His was a name familiar to both the Israeli...
The Torah’s pointed note (Bamidbar 3:4) of the fact that Nadav and Avihu had no children (according to the Midrash, because they did not marry) is understood by Chazal as having contributed to their...
The problem surely occurs to every reader of the first Rashi in parshas Behar. The Rabban shel Yisrael, quoting a Midrash, recounts the famous question, “What does shemita have to do with Har Sinai?”...
The Baitusim, a sect in Talmudic times often associated with the Tzedukim (or Sadducees), had a congenial approach to establishing the date of Shavuos, which the Torah describes as the fiftieth day from a...
There is no gainsaying the importance of tznius in the life of the Torah Jew and the Torah community. Yet, few issues have contributed more to young people losing their enthusiasm for Torah ““...
No one who actually values the unity of the Jewish people can vote for a resolution that requires violating a Torah principle, because Torah cannot and will not be negotiated.
The haftarah for Acharei Mos, which will be read this week for the double parsha of Acharei Mos/Kedoshim, is from Amos (9:7), where Hashem extols the Jewish people with the famous and famously strange...
Tzara’as, the condition that occupies the bulk of parshios Tazria and Metzora, is characterized by the Talmud as a punishment for sins like speaking ill of others or stinginess at their expense. Thus the...
