Today, March 17th 2011, is Ta’anit Esther, the Fast of Esther, observed before Purim which begins this Saturday night. This is one of those years when the fast before the feast feels especially needed and especially important. The practice is based on the words found in the biblical Book of Esther, 4:15-16, “Then Esther sent…

March 15, 2011 marks the fifth anniversary of Gilad Shalit’s kidnapping. To mark the anniversary, Israelis participated in a national moment of silence this morning. People were asked to stop working, pull their cars to the side of the road, leave cafes and take to the streets, which more than a million people did. Some…

Were the three men wrapping themselves in leather straps and mumbling in a foreign language on Alaska Airlines Flight 241, a security threat or were they Orthodox Jews preparing to pray in their tefillin, — amulets bound to the arm and head as part of traditional Jewish weekday prayer rituals? It was the latter, though…

For those keeping score, this is a good week for God in the American legal system. Or perhaps a better summary would be that it is a bad week for knee jerk anti-religionists. In the last 96 hours, The Supreme Court of the United States refused to hear two cases dealing with the ongoing struggle…

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