In the United States, we recently passed the second year anniversary of the events of January 6, 2021, when people from all over the country came armed to Washington, D.C. and interfered with the lawful and peaceful transition of power by storming the U.S. Capitol building. The mob was seeking to...
How Beautiful Our Heritage Jewish continuity has long been a phrase that has buzzed throughout the American Jewish community. Our lived heritage, as it continues to grow and evolve, exhibits that continuity. Our Tradition is the framework for constructing our modern Jewish world, for helping us create our Jewish identities,...
From the Rabbi’s Study A Ship’s Waves–Then and Seventy-Five Years Later In 1946, a ship, the USS President Warfield, was bought for $8,028 by the Western Trading Company to be used as scrap. She originally carried passengers across the Chesapeake Bay. During much of WWII, she was a training...
Remembering the Shoah Eighty Years Later: The Privilege of Survival Rabbi J.B. Sacks April 24, 2022 My family has recorded well over 300 family members who died during the Shoah. So Yom HaShoah has deep importance for me, and being together with you, and commemorating it together adds to...
From the Rabbi’s Study Purim: Life Needs Farce and Fantasy The Scroll of Esther (M’gilat Ester) contains a melodramatic tale of court intrigue, not unlike what one might find in the Arabian Nights. The outlines of its story are well-known, but in reading the tale, questions abound. Why...
The books of Joshua and Judges offer two competing views of how Eretz Yisrael (the land of Israel) was conquered in biblical times. The book of Joshua argues that the conquest by those who entered the land after our people’s 40 years of wandering was rather efficient, quick, and complete....
