The First Rabbi in America

The first ordained rabbi to serve in an American congregation was Rabbi Abraham Joseph Rice (originally Reiss, 1800-1862). After studying in Germany, in Wurzburg and then Fuerth, Rice was…

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Bnei Brak: A Unique City

In Israel, there are any number of towns that identify themselves as primarily religious. There are none, however, that are as distinct or well-known for being as intensely religious as…

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The Great Disputation

Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman (Ramban/Nachmanides c. 1194-1270) was one of the great personages of the Golden Age of Spanish Jewry. He authored commentaries on the Torah and the Talmud and was…

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Surviving and Leading

Although born in Hungary in 1904, Rabbi Yehoshua (Joshua) Menachem Ehrenberg was living in Cracow when the Nazis began their systematic destruction of European Jewry. The city of Cracow,…

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Bnei Brak – A Unique City

In Israel, there are any number of towns that identify themselves as primarily religious. There are none, however, that are as distinct or well-known for being as intensely religious as…

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Celebrating Bar Ilan University

Would you believe that the founding of Israel’s second largest university (33,000 students) was conceived “deep in the heart of Dixie"? Two years after Israel’s founding in 1948, the…

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Terumah 5775-2015

“The Sanctity of the Synagogue” by Rabbi Ephraim Z. Buchwald This week’s parasha, parashat Terumah, is the first of a series of parashiot that deal with the creation, erecting and…

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