Former President Barack Obama criticized the founding of Israel, not because Jews didn’t deserve a refuge, but because the founders of Israel “took land” from the Palestinians. Did they?First, a preamble. Jews deserve Israel not only as a refuge, but because Jews are indigenous to the Land of Israel.
In the final week of this election season, it’s hard to see beyond politics. The attack ads have been coming hard and fast (love that mute button!) and the stakes are high. Voters are concerned about existential issues.
It’s a tradition. Whenever I’m at my old stomping grounds, I pop by my former neighborhood’s falafel joint. Now I know — everyone claims their falafel place is the absolute best. But, without getting into the merits of the various amazing falafel joints across Jerusalem, and Israel, trust me.
Enjoy reading and deciding on the 14 statewide ballot measures in Colorado’s upcoming election. If Constitutional Amendment 85 passes, there will be no more ballot measures in the next election, or in any election. Zippo. Zilch. Amendment 85 reads: “Shall there be an amendment to the Colorado Constitution . . . requiring all state and local ballot questions to be written in plain language and at no more than an 8th-grade reading level . . .?”
Sure, AI may one day take over the world and kill us all, but in the short run, it will rot our brains, destroy our ability to think, and make us more addicted to the internet than ever before. I know because I am an AI addict.
Shoutout to my friend Dr. Lisa Greenstein Sokol! Her son, Moshe, is a first-grader at Hillel Academy, and she’s arranged for a number of in-person guest visitors to share their professions with the students. I was honored that she asked me and I was exicted to spend time at my old stomping grounds, sharing what a newspaper is with these young minds.
In 2026, ICE tripled the number of arrests of illegal immigrants. Sounds like a winning campaign, no? Actually, it’s absurd. Do the math. ICE reports 1,264 arrests per day in 2025. Multiply 1,264 times 365 days per year. That comes to 461,360 arrests in 2025.
Liora Ben Tzur of Kibbutz Ein HaShlosha gave birth to her third daughter just 30 hours before the events of Oct. 7, 2023. Her mother, Marcelle Talia, came from her home in Kiryat Arba to the kibbutz to help Liora’s husband with the children.
When the voter guide is 130 pages long, you know you’re in trouble! There are 14 questions on the ballot, seven of them constitutional amendments. And I haven’t even gotten to the judicial performance evaluations or elected officials!
I was on my way to Gan HaVradim, the rose park in Jerusalem that lies between Israel’s Supreme Court and the Knesset. Unexpectedly, just steps in front of me, was a huge white tent, with a picture of Hymanot Kasau, as well as flags waving in the breeze, flags bearing Hymanot’s visage.
I’ve been interviewing politicians and diplomats for over four decades and have a confession: I take a particular shine to those who show any interest in me at all. I know that sounds egocentric. Why, after all, should the prime minister of Israel, the senior senator from Arizona or the ambassador from India care anything about my personal story?
I interviewed Yehezkel Caine earlier this year (IJN Generations, July 3), I never dreamed that one of the topics about which we spoke would manifest a few months later. After all, a pilot hijacking a plane is “exceedingly rare,” according to Caine. If anyone should know, it is he. Caine is an expert in aviation medicine, which among its many facets includes the physical and mental health of airline crews.
Flydubai Flight #1073. Miracles within miracles within miracles: • The good pilot, the captain, manages to unlock the cockpit door despite suffering stab wounds to the head and bleeding to …
The weight of the loss of Oct. 7 is in the air.Because three years ago, Oct. 7 was the date of Simchat Torah. Now, it’s as though there are two official commemoration dates.The Jewish holiday. And Oct. 7.
“Hateful words targeting Denver Jews wrongly demonizes Zionism” is the headline over an op-ed in the Denver Post, Sept. 20, 2026, by Scott Levin and Rabbi Joe Black. I have penned comments on this op-ed. I invited Scott Levin and Rabbi Black to respond. Their comments follow mine.
In the current conflict with Iran, the opening of a Houthi front is pure von Clausewitz. Iran knows the war is deeply unpopular in the United States and that the midterm elections are approaching. Iran sees that there is a large element in the Democratic party and a smaller one in the Republican party that is so obsessed with using the war to tar Donald Trump with its failure that they will go to extraordinary lengths to try to ensure that happens.
Earlier this summer, when we published a profile of Ramah of the Rockies’ Rabbi Eliav Bock, one of my oldest friends told me that she and he shared a kibbutz family, one year apart, and that he was a close friend of one of her college friends.
There is just nothing like the joy of the holiday of Sukkot in Israel.The country seems transformed.Pulsing with an unbridled joyousness.
Is it hard to be joyous? The Vilna Gaon (1720-1797) is reputed to have said that the hardest mitzvah in the Torah is to be joyous for all seven days of Sukkot, without stop. Is it tough to be happy?Is it right to take drugs, or to drink heavily, if that is the only way to feel joyous?
Unless you speak Russian, you likely aren’t familiar with the word, but trust me, America needs babushki. We need them big time.“What are they and why do we need them?” you ask with alarm.
Rachamana . . . The Merciful One. I was at the Kotel, the Wailing Wall, one among tens of thousands standing for midnight penitential Selichot prayers.
Rabbi Kalman Topp and his wife Jordana recently announced that they are making aliyah to Israel. For the past 17 years, Rabbi Topp has led Beth Jacob Congregation in Beverly Hills, Calif., one of the area’s largest and most influential Jewish communities. Now he is coming to Israel to establish a new community for new immigrants in Jerusalem.
For the coming year, let every Jew undertake a specific enhancement to one’s Shabbos observance. Let it counterbalance, so to speak, the absence of the spiritual merit of shofar on the first day of Rosh Hashanah.
I will take anyone’s wager that if Israel tomorrow appointed a new centrist prime minister who immediately pulled the IDF out of Gaza and put a moratorium on settlement expansion, people like Zohran Mamdani and Ed Miliband would still condemn Israel.