The battle is waged against Amalek, and as it finishes, we are told that “Yehoshua weakened Amalek and his people with the sword." The Torah’s word for weakened is vayachalosh, but its translation is not so clear. more

The weapons used by Palestinian terrorists against Jews are well known: suicide bombs, like the one that killed my daughter Alisa in 1995; knives, like the ones used to slaughter the Fogel family in Itamar two years ago; rifles, like the one used in the sniper shooting of the infant Shalhevet Pass in Hebron in 2001. Sometimes we forget that there is another terrorist weapon that can be lethal: the rock. Last week, there were two reminders of that tragic fact. more

There are a number of mitzvot associated with the Korban Pesach — the Paschal Lamb sacrifice that was first commanded in Egypt and eaten the night before the Exodus — that apply anytime the Korban Pesach is offered and eaten. One concerns how it is to be prepared: “Do not eat it raw or [very] cooked in water, but only roasted over fire; its head (on) its legs and (on) its internal organs” (Shmot, Bo, 12:9). more

Walk into any Jewish home and ask yourself: What distinguishes it as a Jewish home? There is actually no ritual, biblical obligation concerning the Jewish home, save one: the mezuzah. One would expect to find this symbol, therefore, in the center of our homes, the living room or dining room. Yet we place our mezuzah in the doorway at the entrance to the home, a place we only pass through, never really stopping to focus on much of anything. more

Israel ended 2013 in much the same way as previous years: facing a surge of terrorist activity from the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. more

Al-Qaeda terrorists have held 72-year-old Warren Weinstein since mid-August 2011. On Wednesday, Al Qaeda released a video with Dr. Weinstein asking President Obama to negotiate his release. We know that he was alive when the video was made, but we don’t know when it was made and if he is alive now. The mainstream media covered the release of the video, but I knew Warren Weinstein; he is a human being, a good one at that. more

My stepdaughter Yardena gave birth to her third bouncing boy a few weeks ago and my husband Jerry was planning to head to Israel for the bris. He had such wonderful memories of the last trip to Israel for the last bris that he wanted to replicate it. I advised against a nine-hour layover in Romania, as it would be best if he spent more time with the grandchildren than in the airport. Boy did he ever owe me for that advice. Had he taken the layover, he would have gotten to Israel after all roads to Yerushalayim from Tel Aviv were closed due to snow. more

A much neglected book was recently brought to my attention by my friend, Yitzy Gruen of Brooklyn’s famed Judaica Place on Avenue M, published by the OU, entitled “Missing the Point: What’s Wrong with the Orthodox Jewish Community and How to Fix It.” Its author is Rabbi Dr. Gidon Rothstein of Riverdale. more

On a virtual stroll through the website of the “U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel” — a deeply unpleasant experience — I came across an article that drew an analogy I hadn’t encountered before. Intellectually ludicrous and morally ugly, the writer compared the situation of Aida, a Palestinian refugee camp near Bethlehem, with the bombing by the German Luftwaffe of the Basque city of Guernica in 1937, during the Spanish Civil War. The Aida camp is not the most luxurious place on earth, yet it is far from being the worst. more

The latest Edward Snowden revelation is that the NSA and GCHQ, the British equivalent, were spying on the communications of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his cabinet, including Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak and his chief of staff, Yoni Koren. Reaction from senior members of the Israeli Cabinet has been muted, perhaps because they operate on the assumption that they are being monitored. more