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![]() Jonathan MuskatThe Times of Israel (Blogs) |
Graduation season is underway! Graduation is a significant achievement that is valuable in a very practical way. Not only does it provide a sense of...
This coming Sunday, I will march with my school at the Celebrate Israel Parade in Manhattan. This is probably the world’s largest expression of...
Every Jewish holiday has its complication. On Yom Kippur, I’m starving. On Sukkot, I must eat outside in the cold. On Pesach, I get indigestion from...
Rav Yoni Rosensweig is the rabbi of the Netzach Menashe community in Beit Shemesh and the founder of Maaglei Nefesh, an institute addressing mental...
This past Shabbat, King Charles III was crowned during a festive and religious ceremony at Westminster Abbey. More than 20 million people in the...
Yesterday, I choked up watching a very moving video that went viral. It was a video of the Dee family meeting the patients whose lives were saved by...
Living in America, I cannot help being struck by the stark contrast between Yom Hazikaron in America and Yom Hazikaron in Israel. Yom Hazikaron in...
The decision to cancel three Talmud courses on Yeshiva University’s Beren campus (for women) next year due to lack of interest has sparked...
Every erev Pesach, for the past ten years, I have been selling chametz belonging to my shul members to Alicia Martinez, our shul caretaker. Every...
Rabbis are very busy during this time of year. We are involved in preparing our Shabbat Hagadol drasha , shiurim and drashot for Pesach and...
I have never experienced anything like this. Last Friday, my wife, three of my children, my daughter-in-law, one son-in-law, three grandchildren and I...
A few weeks ago, I met someone who told me that he had an anger problem and he was working on controlling his anger. Now the Torah takes a strong...
Beyond the masks and the parties and the revelry, the holiday of Purim has a unique message about God’s love for us. We can uncover this message by...
Whataboutism is an argumentative tactic where a person or group responds to an accusation or difficult question. Instead of addressing the point made,...
What’s not to love about the month of Adar? After all, aren’t we obsessed with finding happiness? Don’t we live in a happiness-seeking culture?...
This year’s Super Bowl was an exciting game to watch, but I was disappointed with the ending. The teams were tied at the score of 35 with about 90...
How do we turn our routines into rituals? We are fortunate to have a group of men and women in our community who study daf yomi, a page of gemara each...
Our Jewish community is reeling from the latest attacks in Israel this past Shabbat. The first attack on Friday outside a shul claimed the lives of...
As we begin studying Masechet Nazir in the daf yomi cycle this week, many of us are confronted with the very basic question of the Torah’s stance on...
I never met Rav Moshe Kahn, but I feel a tremendous sense of loss by his passing. My daughter, Elisheva, had the fortune of being in his shiur every...
I read an article in the Forward that Rabbi Jeremy Kalmanofsky, rabbi of Ansche Chesed, a Conservative synagogue in the Upper West Side, plans to stop...
I have a lot of respect for Yeshivat Har Etzion and its rabbinic leadership these days. (And, no, I never attended that Yeshiva.) The religious...
As I reflect upon 2022, I feel that I have experienced a year when there has been ever-increasing polarization, animosity and vitriol in our society...
On the surface, it seems that our generation can relate very well to the holiday of Chanuka. After all, Chanuka is the holiday when we defeated those...
Ben Shapiro recently wrote an article asserting that Modern Orthodoxy is in crisis because its leadership is not standing up to Torah values in its...
This past week, I received the following voice message, “Hello. My name is ________. I live in Oceanside. I was driving on Long Beach Road yesterday...
The secret to a strong Jewish education is to find the right balance between joy and discomfort. On the one hand, we want our children to be happy in...
I frequently ask myself the same question almost every holiday. Will it last? Will the lessons that I learned during this holiday leave a lasting...