Even before I laid eyes on the sorrowful yet mesmerizing photos of Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral going up in flames, the iconic cathedral billowing plumes of smoke, my immediate reaction was … more

Not long ago, I heard a powerful vignette from Rabbi Marvin Hier, the former director of the Simon Wiesenthal center. When Simon Wiesenthal, the famous Holocaust survivor and Nazi hunter, celebrated … more

I couldn’t believe it. One of my trusted old reference books failed me for the first time. I am an old-fashioned guy and I still use books for reference rather than resorting to the … more

My mother was part of one of 97 Jewish families in Sheikh Jarrah in the early 1990s, but the Jewish roots there go back much further. As the Sheikh Jarrah case awaits the court’s … more

Over the past week the media and various communities have been in an uproar over the unfortunate death of Shireen Abu Akleh, a veteran Al Jazeera reporter, and clashes at her funeral a couple of days … more

My wife’s maternal grandmother was a wise old woman, raised in the Old City of Jerusalem where she accumulated wisdom from her Yiddish-speaking family and the diverse Jerusalemites who … more

There are many inspiring stories from the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of April 1943, the 80th anniversary of which is being marked this week, but this passage is probably the one that left the deepest … more

Amos Hochstein, the US special presidential coordinator for global infrastructure and energy security, arrived in Israel last Tuesday for meetings with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and National … more

I was embarrassed by her sharp rebuke. But looking back, I realize the lesson I learned from her brief criticism was more valuable than most of my other training experiences. It happened about … more

A call to abolish the tradition of bridesmaid dresses By Sari Nossbaum Issue of Sept. 12, 2008 Traditionally, being a bridesmaid is considered an honor; it is a gesture to signify … more