Last May, as Hamas was firing missiles into Israel with impunity and Israel was shooting down those missiles to keep their citizens from dying, the death count became uneven. Israel invests heavily in keeping her population safe, and Hamas, a terrorist organization, uses Palestinians as human shields. Even though Israel works hard to reduce casualties […]

While this year of the world battling Covid-19 has kept many people in their homes, some people have questioned where they want their home to be. On Yom Ha’Atzmaut, we celebrate aliyah stories, and this year, the challenges posed by the pandemic made making the leap to a life in Israel all-the-more impressive. These families […]

I grew up in an anti-zionist Hasidic community in NYC. I studied in an anti-Zionist cheder (boys school) and yeshiva until I got married at the age of 20. Fast forward to today, I still live and raise my family in a predominantly anti-Zionist Hasidic community. Like in all other Jewish communities, our community has many […]

I grew up in a Hasidic home in the Har Nof neighborhood of Jerusalem and studied in Hasidic yeshivas until I got married. Because soldiers are considered heroes in Israel, most Israeli children, even haredim, dream of joining the IDF. I never believed that my dream would come true, though, until the day I met a Hasidic […]

If God Himself made open miracles to tell you that it was time to return to the land of your forefathers would you listen? The Biblical commentator Rashi asks (on the first verse of parshat Yitro) what it was that Moses’ father-in-law, Jethro, heard that motivated him to leave his homeland and idolatrous proclivities in order to join the […]

The Jews Who Saved Monticello Thomas Jefferson is buried at Monticello, his estate in Charlottesville, Virginia, along with Rachel Phillips Levy, a traditional Jew. How did a Jewish grave end up in Monticello? The answer lies in the history of a family whose own story is every bit as American as that of Jefferson himself. […]