BY MAYIM BIALIK NEW YORK CITY  (JTA) – Yom Kippur. The Day of Atonement is coming. After a year unlike any we could have anticipated, I have been waiting for this day, not for atonement so much as a reset. Jewish tradition teaches us that our fate for the year ahead is sealed on Yom Kippur — and our Book […]

By Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger, “Second Thought: a US-Israel Initiative” Based on ancient Jewish Sages, https://bit.ly/2Fx3pVD More on Jewish holidays: Smashwords, Amazon The evening of September 18, 2020 will launch the 5781th Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah). 1.  Annual reminder.  The Hebrew word Rosh (ראש) means head/beginning and Hashanah (השנה) means the year. The root of the Hebrew word Shanah […]

By Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger, “Second Thought”: a US-Israel Initiative” September 10, 2020, https://bit.ly/3bLqm3k Are Palestinians the descendants of the original inhabitants (Canaanites) of the Land of Israel, as claimed by the Palestinian Authority, or are they descendants of recent waves of immigration?Systematic Arab migration within the Middle East Arab migration within the Middle East – including to/from the area […]

To mark a month since the death of world renowned Talmudic and Torah scholar Rabbi Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz, The Steinsaltz Center will host an online event entitled, “The Steinsaltz Legacy: Jewish Learning for All. Today, Tomorrow, Always,” with guest speakers including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Former UK Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, Former U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman, leading author Dara […]

By Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger, “Second Thought: a US-Israel Initiative” “Mida Magazine,” August 28, 2020, https://bit.ly/34FkqHt, https://bit.ly/32yhVEm    Have Arabs been in the area west of the Jordan River from time immemorial? In 1881, Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, a leading British cartographer and Dean of Westminster Abbey, reported that “in Judea it is hardly an exaggeration to say that for miles […]

By SAMANTHA TENER This story originally appeared on Alma. I received what I believe to be an average Jewish American Conservative synagogue education. I attended Jewish preschool, the full run of weekly, then biweekly Hebrew school, and completed “Hebrew high school” all the way through the rabbi’s confirmation class. This was all at my synagogue outside of Philly, with a […]

By BEN HARRIS NEW YORK CITY (JTA) – Rabbi Adin Even-Israel Steinzaltz, the acclaimed scholar whose landmark translation of the Talmud enabled a vast readership to access one of Judaism’s most canonical texts, has died. Steinsaltz died Friday, Aug. 7, at 83 in Jerusalem. Steinsaltz’s monumental translation of the Babylonian Talmud made the arcane rabbinic debates and folkloric tales easier […]

By DEBORAH FINEBLUM (JNS) – This year Jews the world over got into the Tisha B’Av mood several months earlier than usual. During a typical summer, Jewish families and individuals tear themselves away from family vacations, beach outings, amusement parks and other hot-weather entertainment to enter a period of mourning known as “the Three Weeks” (no weddings, haircuts or shaving, […]

NEW YORK CITY – Herut North America, a leading American Zionist organization has developed an eBook offering ideas about how to improve Jewish unity in these challenging and polarizing times, and it is now being offered for free in time for Tisha B’Av. Herut North America’s free eBook The Challenge For Jewish Unityis now available at https://herut.net/jewishunitybook/ The eBook is authored by Joshua Goldstein, the chairman […]

By MARK LEVEN ATLANTA (JTA) – My library has the popular book “21 Lessons for the 21st Century,” in which Yuval Harari — a Jew, an Israeli and an acclaimed author — states that the Jewish people don’t have a reason to exist anymore. They’ve finished what they had come here to do by contributing to a range of fields, […]