Although I have been friends with Tova Davidovics Lebovits for years, this is the first time she ever shared this remarkable tale with me. With her kind permission, I wanted to share it with you, in Tova’s own […]
Two thousand years ago, when exploitive merchants extorted women by raising the cost of the Temple offerings women were required to bring after giving birth, Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel, Nasi Israel and its highest Rabbinic authority said: “I […]
This past Purim I found myself in the vibrant Jewish community of Las Vegas. Amidst the man-made opulence, gambling casinos, and streets that stayed awake all night, I looked for a traditional megillah-reading with which to fulfill the […]
It wasn’t a pretty sight: tires burning, hysterical men and women charging at the gates to the Knesset. This time it wasn’t the handicapped, or the unemployed. This time it was the municipal employees of Beit Shean, a […]
For women, silence can be literally deadly. A few months ago, I attended a prayer meeting at Jerusalem’s Jeshurun Synagogue to mark the annual international day protesting violence against women. Attendance was sparse. The men’s section bare. A […]
Thirty years ago when I first landed in Israel, straight off an El Al flight from New York, there was no more vilified or ridiculed airline than Israel’s. Some of the criticism was certainly justified. Stewardesses were known […]
It isn’t the flu bug that’s giving Israelis a feeling of nausea and head pains in unprecedented numbers this winter. It’s an epidemic of shamelessness. It’s President Weizman brazenly declaring that taking “gifts from a friend” is perfectly […]
I was sitting on a bus on the way to Jerusalem’s town center a few weeks before Rosh Hashana, when the radio started broadcasting a commercial from the Reform and Conservative movements. It went something like this: “Ask […]
The Council of Torah Sages has banned the Internet. In their decree, they say, among other things: “The Internet is a danger 1,000 times greater [than television — which they banned thirty years ago], and is liable to […]