
The Resonance of Rabbi Goren’s Prayer for Jerusalem
As Jerusalem Day is celebrated this year, beginning Tuesday evening June 4, Rabbi Goren’s words then are worth revisiting now.
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."

As Jerusalem Day is celebrated this year, beginning Tuesday evening June 4, Rabbi Goren’s words then are worth revisiting now.

Amidst the cacophonous chants of “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will be Free” and “Intifada Revolution” there remains, somehow, a controversy over the intent of these slogans.

First he lived biblically, now he’s living like it’s 1787.

It feels like we’ve been counting the Omer for around seven months now.

Commentators have found the most Jewish of ways to understand the origin of this perceived greatness – by arguing about what exactly it means.

Venice, thankfully, no longer is Shylocking its Jews, forcing the Jewish people to apologize for their self-defense.

In “The Promise of Liberty: A Passover Haggada,” readers will find, alongside the traditional Haggadah text, how American abolitionists and artists, Pilgrims and presidents, rabbis and revolutionaries, jazz musicians and generals found inspiration in the Exodus story.

It might come as a surprise to the most devoted comic book and cinematic aficionados that millennia before Kevin Feige and Co. dreamed up Marvel’s Multiverse, the ancient rabbis cast Mordecai of the Megillah of Esther in a strikingly similar context.

In celebration of Presidents Day 2024, Yeshiva University’s Zahava and Moshael Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought and OpenDor Media are partnering in the production and release of a series of four short videos for educators, showcasing the Hebrew Bible’s impact on the annals of American heroism

“What Shakespeare was to literature, Abraham was to faith.”