Beware of Egyptians bearing gifts.

Coming from different circles, the archeological news last week would have been intriguing and welcome. Finding physical evidence of events in Chumash is always exciting. This is all the more so in the face of the previous certainty of many archeologists that the stories in Bereishis did not match what they thought were the established conditions of the times. Al-Ahram last week (cited by MEMRI) announced that what had previously been thought to be charms were actually coins, proving that Egyptian culture in Pharaoic times had advanced beyond barter commerce to a system of currency. Remarkably, the Egyptians reported that these coins included some that bore the name of Yosef.

The researcher identified coins from many different periods, including coins that bore special markings identifying them as being from the era of Joseph. Among these, there was one coin that had an inscription on it, and an image of a cow symbolizing Pharaoh’s dream about the seven fat cows and seven lean cows, and the seven green stalks of grain and seven dry stalks of grain. It was found that the inscriptions of this early period were usually simple, since writing was still … Read More >>

No day of the year is so filled with promise as Yom Kippur. In Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner’s unforgettable words, Yom Kippur contains the potential not just to be a better person (bessere mentsch) but a completely different person (andere mentsch).

Yom Kippur is a day of rebirth. Just as the convert to Judaism is like a newborn infant by virtue of his acceptance of the Torah, so too can we become a new person on Yom Kippur. Conversion requires immersion in a mikveh, which symbolizes rebirth. And HaKadosh purifies us, as if in a mikveh, on Yom Kippur: “Rabbi Akiva said, ‘Happy are you, Yisrael. Before Whom do you become purified and Who purifies you? Your father in Heaven. . . and it says, [G-d is] the mikveh of Yisrael’” (Yoma 85b).

The forty days between the beginning of the month of Elul and Yom Kippur correspond to the forty days that Moshe Rabbeinu spent on Har Sinai preparing to receive the second Tablets of the Law. They form – at least ideally – one continuous process of teshuva (repentance). The most essential ingredient in that process is deep introspection on our part. Only if we know who we really are, and understand the myriad ways in which the yetzer hara has managed to insinuate itself into our lives and taken control, can we hope to change in the coming year.

Unfortunately, thinking deeply about ourselves, or anything else for that matter, is something at which we are ever less adept. The prospect of being alone with our thoughts, without any outside stimulus, terrifies us. If we find ourselves in any of those places or situations where thinking was once possible, we immediately start casting about for people to call on our cell-phones.

Blowing shofar – in striped prison uniform

A controversy in cross-currents.com two years ago led to a remarkable interview I was privileged to record recently. Erev Rosh Hashana, Sept.10,2007 I posted my translation of Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Meisels’ description of his blowing shofar in Auschwitz. Others have also translated the Hebrew description given by R. Meisels in his Mekadshei Hashem, among them R.Yosef Gavriel Bechhofer “Rosh Hashanah in Gehinnom, Auschwitz 1944,” in Artscroll’s revised A Path Through the Ashes). You can read my translation in cross-currents
“Sounding the shofar in Auschwitz”

Quite a bit of controversy and skepticism ensued, raising questions about the shofar blowing in Auschwitz. A dozen comments appeared on Sept.18,2007 – “Spiritual or physical hunger?”

Because of the doubts I decided I would try to find and record some kli rishon testimony.
Recently, I succeeded finding an eye-witness: Rav Yeshaya Glick. I persuaded him to let us video his first-person testimony. R. Glick writes about the shofar blowing in his recently published book Mamchishkim Hoshianu (available so far only in Hebrew from the author, 49 Sorotzkin St,Jer). I went to interview him and recorded him retelling the episode. He was … Read More >>

Coercion comes in many … Read More >>

Oscar Hammerstein applied the words differently in South Pacific in 1949, but they ring true today. “You’ve got to be carefully taught,” for the most part, to take responsibility for the general community. Reflecting back on a wonderful month of experiences, I am left with one bitter realization. We are not doing enough to teach our children about the need to work for the klal, to move in to a problem and take the initiative to find solutions.

Some people are somehow disposed towards it, and will take leadership roles without much prodding. They are born with – or develop – personalities that demand of themselves that they devote themselves to a cause. Most people need to experience the joys of contributing to the general good before they can become contributors.

I lost little time after graduating college to apply, successfully, to PhD programs. My rebbi and Rosh Yeshiva, Rav Henoch Leibowitz zt”l, had different ideas. He pushed everyone in his yeshiva to devote themselves to harbotzas haTorah – to disseminating Torah as far as it would reach. I had escaped the message. He said nothing. One day, however, I asked permission to leave the yeshiva for a few days. … Read More >>

by N. Daniel Korobkin

Recent criminal scandals within the Orthodox world have been devastating. How did we get to this point? To be sure, there are undoubtedly multiple factors that contributed to this new phenomenon, but there’s one probable culprit that can be easily identified and redressed.

Growing up in the yeshiva day school system of the 70’s, I remember starting our day every morning with davening, and later when we got to English class, we faced the American flag and recited the Pledge of Allegiance. We also sang songs like “My Country ‘Tis of Thee,” “Grand Old Flag,” and “America the Beautiful.”

But then I grew up and went off to yeshiva. Something changed within me. The change was so gradual and subtle that I can’t even tell you how it happened. I don’t remember any rebbe or rosh yeshiva giving a whole mussar shmuz about the evils of America, but still, there was something in the air. There may have been a comment like the famous vort, “America stands for ‘Am Reika’ – an Empty Nation.” Or, perhaps it was just the emphasis on the tum’a (spiritual impurity) of the secular world that left me with a negative attitude toward my … Read More >>

There is a world of difference between Tevya’s celebration of “Tradition!” for tradition’s sake and the deep meanings that lie in the rites and rituals of Jewish religious … Read More >>

The Swedish government refused to condemn a totally unsupported article in the country’s largest circulation newspaper alleging that Israel routinely kidnaps and murders Palestinians to harvest their organs. To comment, said Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, would be a violation of the country’s principles of free speech.

Those who called for donors to withhold giving to Ben Gurion University after BGU Professor Neve Gordon penned an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, in which he advocated an international boycott of Israel, were accused of threatening academic freedom.

Both responses reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of the meaning of freedom of speech and academic freedom. Just because the content of speech is legal does not make it proper or immunize it from criticism. I have the right to express my thoughts. But I do not have a right to have The Jerusalem Post publish them, or to demand that it not publish letters ridiculing its “haredi apologist.”

Freedom of the press and speech protect Aftonbladet from sanctions by the Swedish government. But the Swedish government has its own interests – or so one would have hoped – in disassociating Sweden ancient anti-Semitic stereotypes, as the Swedish ambassador to Israel rightly recognized. Had a major Swedish … Read More >>

The Jewish community in Prague almost immediately set off an association in my mind with a gemara in Menachos. Menachos 53B has Avraham almost at the point of despair for his people, after hearing from HKBH the extent of their iniquity. Hashem corrects him, by pointing to a pasuk comparing them to a luxuriously foliated olive tree. The latter it seems, can go for long periods before bearing any fruit, after which they come back with a vengeance. The communists did too good of a job suppressing religion. They would have appeared to have snuffed it out. Instead, the sap in the tree of Jewish life behind the Iron Curtain lay dormant, ready to rise again when the right springtime would arrive.

Intermarriage, I was told, still approaches the 90% mark. But there are also baalei teshuvah. In fact, I ran into quite a few seasoned baalei teshuvah at the Maharal Conference this week who had become rabbonim and are serving communities all over Europe. It gave me particular delight to meet several young people who hailed from the old USSR itself, who had learned and gotten semichah and now serve communities in Eastern, Central, and Western Europe.

Some of … Read More >>

And so there we sat, all through the Sabbath, watching as the synagogue in which we had been imprisoned mere hours earlier was claimed by the flames and, along with all the Torah-scrolls and holy books of both Ruzhan and Govrov, burned to the ground…

Rabbi Shafran’s poignant memories of the lost shul in Ruzhan prompted my brother, Rabbi Shabsai Bulman of Jerusalem, to write:

As a young man, my father, Rav Nachman Bulman ZTL, served as the rabbi of the shul in Danville, VA. Around 1952, a business establishment in Danville, VA, had to clear its basement of the library left behind by a former rabbi. My father was asked to see if he might have use for any of the seforim.

To his surprise, he found a copy of the Alshich HaKadosh that bore the stamp of the Rav R.Weiss of Ruzhan. His mother, my grandmother—Mrs. Ettel Zabeldovich Bulman—was a native of Ruzhan.

Excitedly, my father called his father to ask if he knew that Rav. My grandfather replied, “Of course! He was Mesader Kiddushin at our wedding!”

How did a sefer that once belonged to the Rav of Ruzhan end up in … Read More >>

When a shul dates back to the thirteenth century, you have to take pains to preserve it. So you won’t find an active minyan in Prague’s Altneushul three times a day. Monday, Elul 18, was a special day, and there was heavy traffic. The shul was packed for mincha, on the occasion of the 400th yahrzeit of the Maharal, whose shul it was. I had the zechus of davening vor the amud, inches away from the Maharal’s seat. It was one of the most memorable experiences of my life.

Earlier, we, the participants in a special Maharal conference, had said Tehilim at his kever, including as is customary the letters of his name. (It was almost as if we, who had all gained so much from him, were this one time in a position to do something for him.) After mincha, many of us sat in the ezras nashim and learned his Torah b’chavrusa, followed by a shiur in his machshava by R Neriah Gutel.

Extreme fatigue after a long journey to Prague from Los Angeles leaves me the strength for only a few observations.

The fairy-tale beauty of Prague, its cobblestoned streets running between elegantly and exquisitely facaded buildings, is hard to … Read More >>