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(print version) A number of years ago at a parlor meeting of the coalition for the Israeli Soldiers missing in action, someone stood up to share a few words about a close friend of his with whom he had both studied and gone to war: Yehuda Katz. Yehuda Katz, a soldier who, along with Zack Baumel and Tzvi Feldman, has been missing in action since the battle of Sultan Yaakov in June of 1982, studied in Yeshivat Kerem Be...

(print version) Shabbat: Rest Assured Keep the Shabbat for it is holy unto you..... because in six days G-d made heaven and earth: and on the seventh day He abstained from work and rested....

(print version) Sabra and Shatilla; for most of us, the names of these Arab refugee camps in Beirut, Lebanon evoke images of controversy and confusion as the sites where Christian Phalange soldiers massacred over seven hundred civilians: men, women and children in September of 1982. And most people will associate this controversy with the question of whether Israeli troops controlling the area should have or even could have prevented these terrible events. But for the men of the 202nd battalion of the Israeli paratroopers, including my older brother, these names and that time recall a very different memory. I only got the full story a few months later, when my brother and I managed to get together for Shabbat in our rented apartment in Jerusalem. Late Friday night, I awakened to strange, muffled sounds coming from his room, and discovered him, in the midst of a nightmare. The sounds of his cries were muffled because in the midst of his dream he...

(print version) Is G-d Beyond Us or Within Us? The Torah recounts that G-d instructed the Israelites to build a sanctuary, telling Moses, ...

(print version) There are many different ways to be inspired ,and fill your soul; Most people are blessed on occasion with such an experience through events of great magnitude and significance: listening to the words and thoughts of a true Torah scholar or great mind, or standing in prayer with fifty thousand Jews at the Kotel (the Western Wall) celebrating the festival of the giving of the Torah (Shavuot), or even experiencing the moment of silence in Israel on the morning of Memorial day, as an entire country just stops to honor its fallen heroes. But sometimes inspiration comes in the simplest of moments, like a good cup of coffee. Now don...

(print version) The Divine Wants You to be Happy When Rules Become Delicious Recipes for Your Soul ...

(print version) At the end of World War Two, the United States Army liberated the Concentration camp of Buchenwald, and began the painstaking process of administering to the survivors. Rabbi Herschel Schechter, who was the chaplain of the US eighth army, stayed in the camp and attempted, as much as was possible, to create a semblance of Jewish experience for those who had survived. How does one run a prayer service, and encourage people to pray to a G-d who seemed to have been so absent in those terrible years? Rabbi Schechter requisitioned one of the barracks and set it up as a makeshift synagogue, and began running services for those who were interested. One day, noticing one of the survivors standing on the side watching the prayers, Rabbi Schechter invited him to join the service, but the man refused. Nonetheless, he remained in the barracks, watching the service with the vacant eyes that were common in the camps in those...

(print version) Is G-d Just a Cosmic Party Pooper? How to Find Our Mission in Life I recall a cute comic strip depicting Moses coming down from Mt.Sinai with the Ten Commandments written in stone. ...