Imagine waking up on a beautiful tropical island, with crystal clear waters as far as the eye can see, soft warm white sand around your toes, all the while sipping a delicious margarita and listening to gentle sound of the waves lapping the shore. Heaven! Paradise! This fantasy has only one flaw. You are all […]
Last year, my 15 year old daughter asked if she could fly to New Orleans with other girls from her Orthodox Jewish high school to rebuild houses in some of the poorest areas of New Orleans that still had not recovered from Hurricane Katrina. The group was also scheduled to help a neighborhood prepare for future […]
When my father was in the final weeks of his life, languishing in Cornell hospital, I found myself reaching my breaking point. I was the only relative nearby that could come to the hospital on a regular basis. As a single parent, I was away from my kids for five Shabbosim in a row. It was […]
During a life-threatening crisis, you might expect a man dressed in rabbinic garb to pray for you, but you probably wouldn’t think he’d be the one to save you. With ZAKA, Israel’s primary rescue and recovery organization, whose volunteers are mostly religious Jews – a majority of them Haredi – you get both! ZAKA was […]
Far too often, we forget how essential clothing is to our survival as well as our self-esteem, a resource to which not everyone is privy. Countless clothing donation organizations exist across the globe, but one has been making a major impact across Israel. Yad Leah, founded by Jessica Katz, helps out the impoverished and underprivileged […]
What if you were genetically screened before you and your spouse got pregnant, but then gave birth to a child with a severe illness that could have been prevented? You might despair and lose hope, but if you were Randy Gold, an Orthodox Jew from Atlanta, you’d vow to make sure this never happened to […]
