Just over three years ago, my son began his studies in Yeshivat Maalot, a Hesder Yeshiva which combines rigorous Torah studies with a demanding Army service. more

During his negotiations to restart talks, Secretary of State Kerry reiterated President Obama’s position that Israel should begin negotiations by agreeing to return to the pre-1967 borders (they didn’t). Afterwards they criticized Israel’s move to build additional homes in existing communities. Put aside for a moment that Judea/Samaria is the only place in the world where the President of the United States believes people of a certain religion (Jews) are not allowed to live. What the President and the Secretary of State won’t admit to is, there is no such thing as pre-1967 borders. That imaginary “green line” running through the West Bank is the 1949 Armistice Line. But even the armistice lines were never meant to be a “border.” more

This week’s essay is dedicated to the memory of my dear neighbor, Dr. Jacob Mozak who would have been 100 years old this week. 1913, one hundred years ago, is the subject of a very interesting book entitled, “1913: In Search of the World Before The Great War,” by Charles Emmerson [Public Affairs, 2013]. Designed as a city-by-city survey of events prominent to each that year, the author gives us a unique historical panorama of a world on the brink of a military and political disaster. more

Reacting to Israel’s announcement of 1,200 new housing units in eastern Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria, Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday that the U.S. “views all of the settlements as illegitimate.” more

His career heyday was more than a few years before most of the children he spoke to were born, but John Starks, former New York Knickerbocker, possesses the cache that kept Hillel Day Camp kids from second grade to eighth entertained in the Hebrew Academy of the Five Towns and Rockaway’s gymnasium on Aug. 2. more

On Nov. 1, 1946, Oscar “Ossie” Schectman scored on a fast-break layup in the opening moments of the first game in the history of the Basketball Association of America, as the National Basketball Association (NBA) was known prior to 1949. But until the 1980s, Schectman didn’t make much of what would later be considered a historic basket. more

In our post feminist world, a case in Devarim 22 is very troubling. After consummating his marriage, a man finds that he hates his wife. Instead of following the Torah’s instruction for how to absolve a marriage through divorce (as described in Devarim 24), he chooses to invent charges against her that she was unfaithful, most likely to get out of having to pay her Ketubah. To save a few shekels, he tries to destroy her reputation. more

For the last 12 years, while I called Brooklyn my home, I referred to myself as an Englishman in New York, as I was born and raised in Manchester. That changed Wednesday, when I become a full-fledged Yankee in the Federal courthouse in Brooklyn. more

On Monday, Israel named the first 26 of the 104 Palestinian terrorist prisoners that it agreed to release as a goodwill gesture for the restarting of Israeli-Palestinian conflict negotiations. But while the Palestinian terrorists will initially earn their freedom in this deal, efforts are underway in the U.S. to bring about the further prosecution of those terrorists whose attacks harmed American citizens in Israel. more

There is a strange little village alongside one of Israel’s borders that I came across on one of my reserve duty stints. Without detailing, for obvious reasons, its location, it was a curious place because I could not figure out how on earth it came to be in such a strange place. Any history buff who studies anthropology readily discovers that there are always historical, geographical and often economic reasons that will explain the nature of a city’s location and growth, and whenever I was on reserve duty in different corners of Israel, I always enjoyed my own secret game of sleuth, trying to uncover the mystery of how local villages came to be situated wherever they were. more