“We were only a few broken Jews with two books, but…the day of the Siyum HaShas was my day of victory, the day of victory for all survivors, and the day of victory for every ‘Talmud Jew.’” The brick crematoria of Dachau had barely cooled when the surviving remnants of European Jewry were called upon……

I think Torah New York is going to be amazing! Please come by and say hello. I will be hanging out with Rabbi Moshe Schwed and Ec Birnbaum, talking about the launch of the amazing new AllDAf app for Daf Yomi study. Please click here for more information on this amazing event!

This is what I’m thinking about during the Nine Days. Click here to read the article. Thanks to Laura Adkins for her superlative editing.

Answering a question from Dr. Fred Samuels of Rechovot regarding Synagogue architecture, I noticed that The Lost Wooden Synagogues of Eastern Europe (Carl Hersh, 1999) is available online for free. I think it’s especially appropriate viewing for the Nine Days and Tisha B’Av. Beautifully narrated by Theodor Bikel, the film documents the beauty and grandeur……

Hopefully this event will be cancelled. If not, please join me at The Young Israel of Ft. Lee with Rabbi Zev Goldberg on Sunday, August 11 at 8:45 am or at the Young Israel of Lawrence-Cedarhurst at 6:00 pm. Lecture is free and open to the community.

This one’s for my mother. Book interior beautifully designed by Danit Mills.

The amazing legend, repeated in several medieval sources, of a Jewish kingdom in 8th century France. Part III of the Jews of the Rhone series.

Hopefully this will be cancelled.

I read the Mueller Report (yes, the whole thing). You should too. Here’s some useful shortcuts if you need them.

Daniel Bomberg, printer of the first full Shas.

I’m really thrilled to be cruising the Douro River this summer with Kosher Riverboat Cruises, lecturing on the history of Spanish and Portuguese Jewry (my wife plans to come along, which means I really have to bring my A-game). I just learned that there’s only 18 cabins left, so if you’re interested, please click the……

On Parashat Beshalah (January 20, 1940), a young rebel escaped from the notorious Pawiak Prison, located not far from the Piaseczno Bet Midrash. Andrzej Kott, the 21-year old leader of the military wing of a resistance movement called the Polish People’s Independence Action, was a child of assimilated Jewish parents who had converted to Christianity….…

The recent translation of the work of Rabbi Shimon Gershon Rosenberg (Rav Shagar, 1949-2007) promises to elevate his distinctive thought to a broader audience of readers (Faith Shattered and Restored: Judaism in the Postmodern Age), many of whom will resonate with Dr. Yitzchak Mandelbaum’s comment on his discovery of Rav Shagar: “I knew I had……

The Rebbe’s entry for Parashat Bo (January 13, 1940) is unusual. Recorded in the scribe’s careful hand, with minimal annotation, it has two bold diagonal lines drawn through the center of the text, indicating that the Rebbe rejected it altogether. A brief and uncharacteristic first-person comment is appended: “more of what we said I do……

Really nice to meet with Jésica Neuah of Editorial Perspectivas to work on the tentative cover and book design of the Spanish edition of The Kabbalah of Forgiveness! Great to work with her and the whole team. G-d willing the book will be released in the summer of this year.

I had chills listening to Rabbi Shlomo Katz review the Rebbe’s words on this week’s parashah. I am grateful for his kind words of praise for my recent book on the historical context of the Aish Kodesh, but to tell the truth, I hardly recognized my own words from the masterful treatment they received from……

Chaim Kaplan recorded the mood in the Warsaw Ghetto in January 1942:  The cold is so intense that my fingers are often too numb to hold a pen. There is no coal for heating and electricity is sporadic or nonexistent. In the oppressive dark and unbearable cold your mind stops functioning. Yet even in such……

Five months into the Nazi occupation, the Jews of Warsaw struggled to keep up with the barrage of administrative decrees inflicted upon them by the Germans. When the Rebbe spoke on Parashat Vaera, which fell on January 6, 1940, the worst was still far off. The Nazis had replaced the leadership of the Jewish Council……

The winter of 5702 brutalized the Jews of the Warsaw ghetto with unforgiving cold. Chaim Kaplan, a school principal whose journal Scroll of Agony survived the war, recounts in his typically blunt prose how the physical privations of January 1942 affected the spiritual life of Ghetto inhabitants: Gone is the spirit of Jewish brotherhood. The……

The Sephardic Diaspora Spring 2018 Lecture Series Monday Nights @ 7:00 pm Main Auditorium, Touro College, 1602 Avenue J Brooklyn NY 11230 (718) 535-9333 Free and Open to the Public No hard questions, please. Image: Eleanora of Toledo, student of Benvenida Abravanel February 5: Who Was Benvenida Abravanel? February 12 :Who Was Samuel Usque? (No Class Feb……

On December 27, 1941, the Piaseczno Rebbe delivered his last recorded drashah on Parashat Vayigash in the Warsaw Ghetto. The previous month was especially brutal: an especially cold winter, combined with a severe coal shortage, exacerbated the typhus epidemic, and each morning a detail of the chevra kadisha patrolled the streets to collect the bodies……