Rabbi Dr. Stuart Halpern is Senior Adviser to the Provost of Yeshiva University and Deputy Director of Y.U.’s Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought. His books include the newly released "Jewish Roots of American Liberty," "The Promise of Liberty: A Passover Haggada," "Esther in America," "Gleanings: Reflections on Ruth" and "Proclaim Liberty Throughout the Land: The Hebrew Bible in the United States."
Taragin’s volume is not a conventional academic history of his mentor. Rather, it offers a compendium of warm and wise anecdotes and lessons he learned studying under Amital.
This July Fourth, members of the Jewish faith can take particular pride in one of their rabbis likely inspiring America’s most beloved president’s famous phrase.
In the remarkably rich and highly readable volume, these scholars present a diverse array of traditional opinions regarding Judaism’s interactions with differing belief systems.
Hammer, senior editor-at-large at Newsweek and a prolific lawyer and podcaster, offers a highly readable and convincingly argued new book.
Throughout the American story, Ruth has reverberated, reminding us, then and now – as we read her eponymous book once more on the holiday of Shavuot – of the power of one individual’s faith and loyalty to inspire the fight for freedom and liberty.
Roughly two weeks before the start of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, in front of the General Assembly of the state of Connecticut, pastor Elizur Goodrich offered a comparison between the emerging nation and the ancient Israelite city in his speech “The Principles of Civil Union And Happiness Considered And Recommended.”
Though largely forgotten today, Nathaniel Isaacs, the unlikely Jewish British adventurer, continues to shape how we perceive Africa, a land foreign to our own, one that continues to possess the possibilities of exploration, excitement, and the lure of the unknown.
Might that hot dog you’re chowing down at the stadium actually be a concession to the violent inclinations of mankind?
I’m speaking of the tune-switch that the Friday night hazan pulls for the last few stanzas of “Lecha Dodi.” Where did this quirky cantorial custom come from and how did it become so popular?