Community Corner

The Super Bowl is back, which means another year of Chazaq’s Halftime for Torah programming!

During the time of Tu BiSh’vat, all the plants appear to be the same as it was the day before. But beneath the rough, lifeless bark, hidden from sight, there is a stirring…a silent awakening…a new life beginning to emerge that will eventually, with Hashem’s help, blossom and bear fruit. We can learn three important lessons from Tu BiSh’vat.

The incredible life story of former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin plays out in a captivating documentary film.

“There are those who advise us [as a result of increasing antisemitism] that Orthodox Jews should hide their Orthodoxy, they should not be so visible and [they should] just blend into society and that will minimize the increasingly violent attacks against visibly Orthodox Jews. I ask, is that the progressive definition of freedom? Is that what great Americans fought, lived, and died for? So that its citizens should have to hide from who they are?!”

Touro undergrads experience cultural differences in healthcare on eye-opening trip to Thailand

How should pre-med students from the United States react to a hospital in Thailand that hires its all-female nursing staff based on a beauty contest? And should they have ethical concerns about an in vitro fertilization clinic in Bangkok that refuses to treat infertile couples of different religions?

For many years, I was privileged to host an inspiring yearly parlor meeting at the home of my long-time chavrusah, Aaron Kopelowitz, for the benefit of Yeshivas Beth Abraham Slonim in Yerushalayim. Founded by the Nesivos Sholom zt”l in 1942 when the destruction of the European Slonimer kehillah became known, the yeshivah has been a bastion of Torah and chassidus and continues to grow with many thousands of students in its many educational divisions and branches across Eretz Yisrael.