When Orthodox Jewish U.S. Army Specialist Daniel Agami was killed by an improvised IED in Iraq, he was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart among several other honors, and his parents earned the designation of being Gold Star Parents. Despite this bittersweet distinction, his mother Beth Agami’s deep faith in Hashem has allowed her journey to […]

With a worldwide interest in K-Pop, Korean television dramas, and Kimchi, Korean pride is nothing new to Chana Bilek, an Orthodox Jew from South Korea, with equal pride in the cultures she calls her own. “I was born in Korea. When I was just under 2 years old, I was left abandoned in a hotel […]

The little-known Jewish holiday of Lag BaOmer starts tonight and goes through tomorrow. This day of late-spring fun interrupts a period of national mourning for the Jewish people. How did this annual pre-Memorial Day festival come to be? Two thousand years ago, the great Torah sage Rabbi Akiva, who was considered to be the best teacher of […]

Tu B’Shvat is an all year long celebration when you’re working farmland, as Hasidic Jew Yisroel Bass does at the Yiddish Farm in Upstate New York. The farm was founded in order to “expand the role of the Yiddish language, serve as a bridge between Yiddish speakers of various backgrounds, and to promote environmental stewardship […]

Rabbi Gabriel Negrin’s family has been in Greece for a very long time – since the 4th century BCE, to be exact. Negrin, who has been the rabbi of Athens since he was 26-years-old, explains that the Jewish community of Greece is called “Romaniot.” “I can trace our family background [directly] to the 11th century.”  […]

When picturing an Orthodox Jewish woman, most people conjure up an image of a lady carrying a baby, not a gun. But for Ariella Loew, it seemed like there was no reason she couldn’t do both! Loew grew up in Lincolnwood, just outside of Chicago in an Orthodox family and though she had never seen […]