Looking back on my life, I am grateful to Hashem for being blessed with a beautiful family, wife, children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren. I am comfortable and happy. But it wasn’t always like this. Everyone experiences ups and downs in life. However, it was my father, Rabbi Aryeh Leibish Gottesman, of blessed memory, who helped me […]
Poland is disgustingly beautiful in the spring. I went to bear witness where my people were annihilated, but I never expected to see plains and hills so deep and richly green. I never saw such vibrant rows of yellow flowers. The weather was perfect. I wanted to mess it up, spit on it, hack at […]
The culmination of the Three Weeks, an annual time of mourning the destruction of The Beis HaMikdash (Holy Temple) is Tisha b’Av. It is the saddest day of the Jewish year and the most calamitous in our history. So great was our pain on this day as a nation, that each year we commemorate it […]
Antisemitism doesn’t always scream. Sometimes it can feel like a subtle chill down your neck — not quite cold enough to warrant a coat, but unmistakable enough to leave you with a shiver. That’s what it felt like walking through Switzerland last week as part of a visibly Orthodox family. We were on a summer […]
Not every part of the Torah easily comports with science and reason. Not every part of Jewish law is simple to understand in modern times. Perhaps that is why in our age of increasing skepticism Hashem granted us something as miraculous as the State of Israel. The challenges in Judaism don’t go away, but modern […]
“When I was growing up, learning about the Holocaust, I often wondered what I, as a Christian, would have done in those days if I were a German. Would I have been that person to hide my Jewish neighbor? After October 7th, I didn’t have to wonder anymore. It was my opportunity to use my […]
