News

This week we are celebrating Chanukah. It commemorates the single small jar of tahor olive oil that miraculously burned for eight days. The olives that were pressed to make that olive oil may well have come from the nearby Mount of Olives – Har HaZeisim. The oil had to burn for eight days because the kohanim had become tamei through contact with the dead. To become tahor and be able to prepare new olive oil, they had to go through a seven-day process that involved being sprinkled twice with a mixture of water and the ashes of a parah adumah – a red cow, a process that took place on Har HaZeisim.

“If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one quarter of one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous puff of star dust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly, the Jew ought hardly to be heard of, but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk.

In 2019, the Queens community mobilized to elect moderate Democrat Melinda Katz to the Queens District Attorney’s office.  In 2021, the Nassau County community mobilized to elect Anne Donnelly as their DA. The necessity of that mobilization has become far more obvious this past week than it was at the time, but the electorate of those communities can breathe a sigh of relief that other communities cannot.

Almost at the beginning of the Torah, we are taught that Hashem placed man in the Garden of Eden, l’ovdah (to work it) and l’shomrah (to guard it). G-d gave us the responsibility to use the earth and its resources to grow, to build, and to innovate. He also commanded us to preserve the planet as a legacy for future generations.

“Izzy, come over,” he yells across the beautiful, renovated shul. “Sit. Please join us for Shalosh S’udos.” I had just met Yaakov on Friday night when I decided, for the first time, to daven at the Young Israel of Briarwood. It was very difficult for me to walk in, given the sentimental value there. YIB was the shul that my parents, especially my mom, adored. Mom was very active in the sisterhood and always spoke with such excitement about upcoming shul activities. Mom loved engaging in conversation with Rabbi Kaufman zt”l. Rabbi Kaufman was part of our family. In fact, Rabbi Kaufman was part of everyone’s family.

Did you know that Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen stormed the former U.S. Embassy last week and held U.S. citizens hostage?  Unless you’re an avid reader of the Washington Free Beacon, you probably didn’t. Why was such a monumental story largely ignored by the vast majority of politicians and media?