Rabbi Yosef Shlomo Kahaneman, the esteemed Ponovitcher rov, was asked why Jewish law states that one must leave a cemetery by a different route than the way one came. He responded, “Can any thinking person leave a cemetery the same as when he came?”
This summer, I have a distinct playlist, but unfortunately it is hardly sunny and carefree. Thanks to annual exams, a thorough mammography technician, and an attentive radiologist, my breast cancer was detected early.
At age 99, Holocaust survivor Cantor Zachary Kutner led yizkor with the zest of his youth. He had survived seven selections at Auschwitz yet emerged with a contagious joie d’vivre.
A hot topic of debate these days is defining anti-Semitism — almost to the point where the definition is discussed more than the actual anti-Semitism. At the Boulder Valley School District hearing this month some people spent more time decrying the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism than they did expressing concern that children were physically harassed and bullied because they were Jewish.
A thanksgiving celebration was recently held for Elkana Levi, an officer in the Golani Brigade who was badly wounded in Khan Yunis a year ago and lost both his legs.
For those who allege Israel is committing genocide, a Jewish state and Jews living in the Middle East is the original poison.
I made a terrible mistake. Since I won’t be there with them on their first day of school, in my desire to try to be part of this milestone in absentia, I wanted to leave my neighbors’ elementary school age boys a little first day of school package and cards.
What was the largest forced population transfer in human history? Most will be surprised to hear that it was of ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe to Germany, following the Nazis’ defeat in WW II.
Pete, sweet Pete. Pete’s Fruits and Vegetables is not the same without you. Your sons are not the same without you. Your grandchildren are not the same without you. The Greek community of Denver is not the same without you. The Jewish community on the East Side of Denver is not the same without you.
This place must be what protects the entire nation of Israel!” exclaimed the chasid from Ramat Bet Shemesh. We were seated for kiddush on Shabbat morning in Moshav Amirim, a secular community in the Upper Galilee, having just concluded the Shabbat prayers surrounded by every type of Jew — secular, religious, traditional, haredi and chasidic.
The colonialist claim against Israel would lead to the absurdity of Zohran Mamdani and his family needing to go back to Uganda and South Africa.
Life is full of markers telling you that you are getting older. The Bar or Bat Mitzvah is one. High school graduation, another. Then college graduation, a full-time job, marriage, your first child, a mortgage. On and on it goes.