On Nov. 18, 1995, Itzhak Perlman, the violinist, came on stage to give a concert at Lincoln Center in New York City. Anyone who has ever been to a Perlman concert, knows that getting on stage is no small achievement for him, having been stricken with polio as a child, with braces on both legs and walking with the aid of two crutches. more

Cold; so cold it cuts through the rags that were once clothes, straight to the bone. There was a time this cold so occupied your very being, you could concentrate on nothing else. But that was long ago. Darkness; so dark it sometimes seems more than the mere absence of light; it seems almost tangible. You vaguely recall a time when you were obsessed with determining exactly where you were, pacing in the darkness to examine your environs. You figured out you were in some sort of a concrete cell, perhaps six feet square, but not much more than that. You used to wonder what color the walls were, never having been allowed to see them, but that curiosity has long ago been replaced with more basic needs. more

Once again, Israel, which so longs for peace, is being forced to ready her children for war.... As missiles fall on the South and parts of the coastal region, and leaves are cancelled, there will be many families whose tefillot (prayers) will have special meaning and urgency this Shabbat. more

If you would have asked me what Abir would end up doing with his life, I would have imagined him as a bouncer.... Abir, an ex-paratrooper, is one of the unsung heroes of the battle of the Chinese chicken farm, when a battalion of paratroopers in the Yom Kippur war had to take a crucial Egyptian position by running up 300 yards of open ground; most of the battalion never made it out of there. I could easily have imagined him grabbing one of the first planes out after the war, maybe to New York or Los Angeles. more

Do we have the right to test G-d? Can we sit back and wait for G-d to give us a sign as to what we are meant to do? Or perhaps we are meant to live in somewhat of a fog, so as to preserve intact our freedom to choose and make decisions in this world? This week’s portion, Chayei Sarah, contains a fascinating story on this topic: Avraham is getting on in years, his beloved wife Sarah is now gone and buried, and it is apparently time for Yitzchak to find a wife. So he calls in his trusted servant, Eliezer, and sends him on a mission to find a suitable mate for his son. more

The small room wasn’t much to look at, with its old, tired-looking walls and cracked floor tiles. And yet, a man had died here in this room. They had been looking for him for quite some time, scouring the country and waking entire neighborhoods every time rumor had it that he was somewhere in the vicinity. To judge by the heavily armed troops that were smashing down doors in the middle of the night, he must have had a fire to him, to inspire such a determined manhunt. more

He looked like a teenager, until he began to tell his story, and then his face took on a sadness that aged him…. Avi (not his real name) had only recently finished his regular army stint in the IDF, and was due to fly to South Africa as part of a very special educational mission to work with less-affiliated Jewish teens in South Africa. more

Dedicated to the blessed memory of Natan Yosef Chaim (J.J.) z”l, Ben Rav Yitzchak Ve’Blumah’ Greenberg. On the tenth anniversary of his untimely passing. more

One of the great challenges in life, is knowing when to lead and when to follow. In the Israeli army, commanders are trained to lead by example. Many attribute this concept to the battle for Latrun in 1948. more

I hadn’t planned on stopping to watch, but something about him caught my attention. Maybe it was his eyes, which was where his smile began; before it spread to the rest of his face; you could see it coming in the twinkle in his eyes. Or maybe it was the fact that, knowing his history as a Holocaust survivor, it seemed so powerful that on a day such as this, he could tell his story, with such a smile. more