Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai
Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai (Rashbi), whose yahrtzeit is on Lag Ba’omer, was one the five students who began studying with Rabbi Akiva after the horrible plague that…
Viewing Vashti
She was raised a royal princess, he was raised in the stables. Vashti the daughter of the great Babylonian king, Belshazzar, and Achashverosh the son of Darius the Mede, were a match…
It’s Not Vanity
“Mirror, mirror on the wall, whose the fairest of them all?” Snow White’s wicked step-mother is the perfect example of how society associates mirrors with vanity and wickedness. Believe…
The Burial at Betar
In war, a common means of humiliating the enemy is to refuse them burial of their dead (which is also forbidden by the Geneva Convention). Certainly, demoralization was the goal of the…
The Thrace Pogroms
In discussions of World War II and the decade leading up to the war, history tends to mainly focus on the major players in Europe (Germany, France and England) and the Pacific (Japan and…
The Tribe of Judah
As the forefathers of the 12 tribes, the lives and personalities of each of the sons of Jacob impacted upon the history and behavior of the tribe that was to descend from them. According…
Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai
Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai (Rashbi), whose yahrtzeit is on Lag Ba’omer, was one the five students who began studying with Rabbi Akiva after the horrible plague that…
The Burial at Betar
In war, a common means of humiliating the enemy is to refuse them burial of their dead (which is also forbidden by the Geneva Convention). Certainly, demoralization was the goal of the…
The Babylonian Talmud Completed
Around 200 C.E., Rabbi Judah Ha’Nasi (Judah the Prince) completed his great work of Jewish law, the Mishnah. Although Jewish tradition, for close to 1,500 years, forbade the writing of…
In Cases of Illness
The advances in medicine in the last century at combating illness and extending human life have been astounding. At the same time, now that we now know so much more of the causes and…