Sunday is Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Any serious student of history will recognize that there are moments, all too rare, when a door stands open, waiting for a person, a people, or …
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By Rabbi Binny Freedman
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4/20/17
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Yom Kippur, the day of Atonement. We must have needed a lot of atonement that year, because over those dark days of October in 1973, over 2,000 of our boys would be the sacrifices the Jewish people …
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By Binny Freedman
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4/7/17
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Visiting Poland is an overwhelming experience. It is a country in which a Jewish community flourished for a thousand years which now serves as a mass memorial to European Jewry. It is impossible to …
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By Rabbi Binny Freedman
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3/29/17
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After finally completing infantry officer’s course and then tank officer’s course, I was assigned to the 430th Battalion of the 500th Armored Brigade in the Jordan valley. Given a few …
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By Rabbi Binny Freedman
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3/23/17
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As we dress in costumes for this weekend’s celebration, it should be noted that one of the stories in the Megillah of Esther is very much about clothing.
Mordechai, a hero of the story, had …
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By Rabbi Binny Freedman
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3/10/17
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A few weeks ago I joined about 35 students from Yeshivat Orayta for a week in Poland. We had a remarkable guide named Rav Yitzchak Rubenstein who shared the following story with us:
The Nazis …
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By Rabbi Binny Freedman
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3/15/17
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Sometimes inspiration comes in the simplest of moments, like a good cup of coffee. In the fall of 2000, my unit was called up on special emergency orders (known as a Tzav Shmoneh). I still recall the …
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By Rabbi Binny Freedman
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3/1/17
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When new prisoners arrived in Auschwitz, if they survived the infamous selections on the train platforms, within an hour they were robbed, stripped, shaved and deloused. …
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By Rabbi Binny Freedman
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2/24/17
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There is a story told by Rav Ephraim Oshry, one of the last rabbis of the Kovno Ghetto, in his monumental work of Holocaust responsum, Mima’amakim.
When the Nazis arrived in the small …
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By Rabbi Binny Freedman
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2/15/17
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I n 2001 over Rosh Hashanah, Israel was turned upside down. Prime Minister Ehud Barak had offered Yasser Arafat a chance to end the Palestinian conflict in exchange for 97 percent of Judea and …
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By Rabbi Binny Freedman
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2/8/17
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