Sunday is Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. Any serious student of history will recognize that there are moments, all too rare, when a door stands open, waiting for a person, a people, or … more

Yom Kippur, the day of Atonement. We must have needed a lot of atonement that year, because over those dark days of October in 1973, over 2,000 of our boys would be the sacrifices the Jewish people … more

Visiting Poland is an overwhelming experience. It is a country in which a Jewish community flourished for a thousand years which now serves as a mass memorial to European Jewry. It is impossible to … more

After finally completing infantry officer’s course and then tank officer’s course, I was assigned to the 430th Battalion of the 500th Armored Brigade in the Jordan valley. Given a few … more

As we dress in costumes for this weekend’s celebration, it should be noted that one of the stories in the Megillah of Esther is very much about clothing. Mordechai, a hero of the story, had … more

A few weeks ago I joined about 35 students from Yeshivat Orayta for a week in Poland. We had a remarkable guide named Rav Yitzchak Rubenstein who shared the following story with us: The Nazis … more

Sometimes inspiration comes in the simplest of moments, like a good cup of coffee. In the fall of 2000, my unit was called up on special emergency orders (known as a Tzav Shmoneh). I still recall the … more

When new prisoners arrived in Auschwitz, if they survived the infamous selections on the train platforms, within an hour they were robbed, stripped, shaved and deloused. … more

There is a story told by Rav Ephraim Oshry, one of the last rabbis of the Kovno Ghetto, in his monumental work of Holocaust responsum, Mima’amakim. When the Nazis arrived in the small … more

I n 2001 over Rosh Hashanah, Israel was turned upside down. Prime Minister Ehud Barak had offered Yasser Arafat a chance to end the Palestinian conflict in exchange for 97 percent of Judea and … more