A brief discussion of the election of Volodomyr Zelensky in the larger context of Ukrainian-Jewish history. Recorded on March 4, 2022 with hope for a speedy return to peace for Ukraine and its people.

My grandfather died, suddenly, on the rarest date of the year: March 3, 1957, which coincides with today, the 30th of Adar Rishon. It’s a leap year date that only appears seven times in the nineteen-year cycle of the Hebrew calendar. Following our Lithuanian Jewish custom, we observe his death anniversary on the 1st of…

I recorded this video just hours before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, motivated by Mr. Putin’s bizarre speech denying the historical legacy of the Ukrainian people.

This brief video provides a survey of the long Jewish presence in the region, framed in the context of maps: political, ethnolinguistic, military and social.

Very pleased to welcome the 100th student to my new online class on the Holocaust, free and open to the community. When Was the Book of Esther Written? New video available to students registered for the Biblical Jewish History course, and YouTube channel members at the Researcher and Colleague level.

Join us today at 11:00 am ET (New York Time) for a discussion of the implications of Digital Learning for Torah and Torah-adjacent study. Rabbi Schwed is the visionary director of multiple initiatives for the Orthodox Union, including the revolutionary All Daf app, also All Mishnah and All Parsha. Click here to RSVP for the…

The Jewish history Lab begins a discussion of the Holocaust. Premieres today at 12 noon ET (New York Time) with live chat. Join us! Archaeological Forgeries and Biblical History Discussion of the difficulty of working with forged artifacts and the study of Biblical History. This video is available to YouTube Channel members at the Researcher…

We got Zoombombed by Neo-Nazis in the middle of the conference, but I manage to deliver my presentation. Join us at 12 noon ET (New York time) for a premiere and live chat! 23 minutes, presentation is a little different than most of my lectures but still fun I think. I hope. Online Courses

Also: Origins of the Jewish People; Neo-Nazis Zoombomb the Sri Lankan Conference of Jews and Buddhists; Soviet Jews During the Interwar Period, and What’s with the Queen of Heaven Business? What is a Synagogue? 7. A Place of Community (Carpentras, France) Final installment in the What is a Synagogue? series. Amazing things in the basement…

Jewish History lectures, recent and forthcoming. It’s been pretty busy. Jews and Ukrainians in Revolutionary Times Ukrainians and Jews forged an unusual partnership during the brief period that followed the collapse of the Russian Empire, creating a Ministry of Jewish Affairs in a short-lived independent Ukrainian state. The experiment was doomed, however, by the Russian…

Warning: this video deals with issues that some of my fellow students of Jewish history might find philosophically challenging.

Also: what’s with the Eternal Light in the Crypto-Jewish synagogue of Belmonte, Portugal?

Tonight at Machon Chana: part two of The History of Sephardic Jewry series. Last week we looked at the origins of Spanish Jewry and the Muslim period; tonight we will focus on the Reconquista up to the Expulsion of 1492.

Main Auditorium of the Mighty Avenue J campus of Touro College 1602 Avenue J, Brooklyn NY 11230 7pm  Free and open to the community.  No hard questions, please.  For more information please click here. 

My old friend Dr. Michael Chigel tagged me on Facebook this morning with his remarkably kind and generous unsolicited review of Torah from the Years of Wrath. I’m deeply moved and grateful to Mike for promoting the Torah of the Aish Kodesh, as well as for the undeserved praise he lavished on my small contribution, but also…

Very pleased to see this revised edition of my first book available. Includes a new foreword and afterword.  

To the Hasidim steeped in the religious significance of the ritual calendar, the Sabbath known as Zakhor (March 23, 1940) must have seemed a cruel redundancy. Literally called “remember,” the Sabbath preceding the holiday of Purim is named for a few publicly read Torah verses (Deuteronomy 25:17-19) that memorialize the attack of Israel’s primordial enemy,…

Hey friends in Crown Heights! Please drop by and say hello.

(Well, not Yehudah Ha-Levi, but a lecture about the great Spanish-Jewish poet-philosopher of the 12th century). With Rabbi Moshe Teitelbaum. 

Sponsored by Brandon Sultan in honor of the Sultan and Benarroch Families, whose Sephardic roots are expressed in a desire to honor the Convivencia; and also in loving memory of Mrs. Jean Milstein, whose relentless optimism was an inspiration to all.

Someone told me that this was printed in The Vues. I’m not a Rabbi, but I’m kind of pleased that Ari Hirsch asked for my opinion anyway. Makes me feel like I actually belong in Brooklyn, somehow, if I’m included in this paper known as “the Heimishe Voice.”

The last weeks of winter 1942, ironically, represented a kind of plateau for the Jews of Warsaw. The typhus epidemic abated, and the Nazis had established some work facilities (“shops”) that led many to believe that through productive labor, the Jews would endure. The general feeling was, in the words of historians Barbara Engelking and…

The life and times of an important woman of the early post-Expulsion generation of Sephardic Jews. Can’t see the video? Click here please.