… it’s counterproductive to play the victim card whenever a Jew is attacked. Who are we kidding? Jews look like the very opposite of victims. That’s not just perception—it’s reality. Whether or not we like to admit it, Jews have long punched above their weight, achieving an extraordinary level of success in their long and often arduous American journey.

How can I be so enamored of a country with such a long history of antisemitism? Just as America’s legacy of slavery will always be present, the fact that 76,000 Jews were deported to Nazi death camps during World War II cannot be ignored.

Classic Judaism has included an idealistic universalistic world-view. Judaism’s horizons have been great; and it has begotten great ideas. The challenge to modern Jews is to remain faithful to their distinctive mitzvot while maintaining a universalistic ethical idealism.

Many long-distance friendships also have the advantage of seeming like high-stakes engagements. When scheduling time with a friend nearby, for instance, canceling might not feel like a big deal. But coordinating vacation time and booking a rental house with someone is harder to flake on when the strains of daily life get in the way.

To those who snubbed Yiddish, regarding it as the language of the uneducated, Singer retorts (in the polemic-edged essay “Yiddish, the Language of Exile”): “The very fact that for generations Yiddish was despised should serve as a sign that great treasures of folklore, wisdom, and uniqueness are hidden in it.”

In this short video, the UK filmmaker and presenter Max Tobin deploys a heavy dose of gallows humour to investigate a groundbreaking series of studies that may offer hints at what the stage between ‘clinical death’ (cessation of vital functions) and ‘brain death’ (cessation of brain activity) actually feels like.

They came to the Valley of Eshkol and they cut a branch with a cluster of grapes. They carried it on a pole between two [people] and [they also took] some pomegranates and figs.

-Num. 13:23

Laya Saul: The Israelite spies entered the land. There they found abundance or shefa – rich growth. Pomegranates, figs, and grape vines with clusters so big it took two men to carry one cluster of grapes. The image moves us so deeply that it’s the symbol of Israeli tourism today.

Our Sages say that hafrashat challah was one of the main reasons Hashem created the world. Certain things are called “reishit”: Am Yisrael is called reishit, the Torah is called reishit, bikkurim and hafrashat challah are also called reishit – “reishit arisoteichem.” It is understandable that Hashem created the world because of Am Yisrael or because of the Torah – but to create the world because of hafrashat challah? That hafrashat challah is a cornerstone of this world, what does that mean?

Like many slanderers do, according to our sages, the Spies begin with flattery, from “the land flows with milk and honey,” it’s bounteous and fertile, and end with evil, to the people in it are nefillim, giants, and compared to these terrifying people who could cause our hearts to collapse “We looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we must have looked to them.” From their lack of trust in Hashem they spread lies, calamities, fear, dibah (defamation) leading to the people wanting to overthrow Moses and Aaron.

Shmuel Rosner chats with Catherine Wolff about her book: “Beyond: How Humankind Thinks About Heaven.”

Catherine Wolff is a writer, editor, and former director of The Arrupe Center for Community Based Learning at Santa Clara University.

Well, it’s Legends Week once again as we welcome the ‘doctor’ and very reverend comedian George Wallace to the podcast.

Mark and Lowell hang out with George for over two hours and cover so much ground.

In this episode of the 18Forty Podcast, we talk to Rabbi Steven Gotlib, a fellow at Beit Midrash Zichron Dov and Rabbinic Educator at the Village Shul, about the relationship between first principles and how we are to live.