In 2005, Steve Jobs delivered the commencement address at Stanford University. In it, he described how he had started Apple in a garage at age 20, and after ten years of hard work, built it into … more

If you would have collected a group of world-renowned military strategists on Yom Kippur in 1973 and asked them, at 4 pm Israel time, for a prognosis on the status of the events unfolding on the … more

I hadn’t planned on stopping to watch, but something about him caught my attention. It was Tisha B’Av, the anniversary of the day our Temples were destroyed, the city of … more

I remember the first Mishnah I ever learned, and it wasn’t in a classroom. The synagogue we attended when I was five years old had a strict decorum, and I recall the challenges this … more

It was the height of the intifada, and we were in the midst of a month’s reserve duty. Deep in the heart of Hebron an Israeli lookout was meant to spot trouble on the road below and protect … more

This past week we celebrated Rosh Chodesh Elul, a major step toward our upcoming encounter with the Almighty on Rosh Hashanah. As such, Chodesh Elul emerges as the preeminent time to prepare … more

During the Holocaust, the Klausenberger Rebbe, Rabi Yekutiel Halberstam, passed through the gates of hell many times. In the Warsaw Ghetto, the work camps and death marches and the final … more

This week’s parsha, Re’eh (literally: “See!”) is all about learning to see the world through different eyes. This may explain why the particular mitzvah of being joyous on … more

In 1897, Theodore Herzl convened the first Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland. Though he defined himself as a secular Jew to whom Judaism was just an afterthought he gave form to a 2000 year … more

The image of his smiling, victorious face, aglow with the sense of vindication that seemed to be one step away from “I told you so,” has become the paradigm of the image of impending … more