Really looking forward to meeting this community!

Lectures in Jewish History and Thought. No hard questions, please.



Volume One: Ancient Israel available November 10! Dear students of Jewish history! I’m delighted to inform you that Volume One: Ancient Israel of my four-volume The Jewish People: A History is now published! Thank you all for the thousands of comments–both supportive and corrective–that you have provided as the Jewish History Lab series unfolded on…

Gold Award as well as the Listener’s Choice Award in the category of History! Thank you all so much for your support!

If you are planning to be in Queens next Shabbat, please drop by and say hello!

Tomorrow at 8:45 am at Congregation Ahavath Torah in Englewood, 6:45 pm at Darchei Noam and via Zoom.

Drop by and say hello! Happy to have had this conversation with JLI! In case the video doesn’t embed properly: https://youtu.be/URfkNuEJu1Y?si=ZFPNfxr_8BW_0c89

Really looking forward to speaking to the Ner Yisrael community this coming Shavuot! If you are in Hendon, please drop by and say hello.

Looking forward to speaking to the Fort Lee community. If you’re in town, please join us and say hello!

Looking forward to speaking in Ramat Bet Shemesh! New Series: Artificial Intelligence in the Context of Jewish History (and the Jewish Future)

Very proud to mark the completion of a cycle of Talmud study on Tuesday night. Here is the video that is scheduled for that morning, describing the process for the 100k+ viewers who follow Jewish History in Daf Yomi at http://www.alldaf.org. New Series! Jewish History in the Torah The Mystery of Michelangelo’s Hebrew Support this…


Happy to see this Spanish translation of The Kabbalah of Forgiveness forthcoming in the next few weeks! The cover is really striking. Thanks to Jésica Neuah at Editorial Perspectivas!
Can’t see the video? Try clicking here.

Wow–just heard that Torah from the Years of Wrath got promoted to the window display at M. Pomeranz Books in Jerusalem! Thanks to my friend Dr. Mike Chigel for plugging the book to MR. POMERANZ HIMSELF, shown here just outside the display!

In commemoration of Yom Ha-Shoah, our Jewish History lecture on Monday night will be dedicated to a topic frequently overlooked in discussions of the Holocaust: the experience of Sephardim. Please click here for details. Most of my own published work on the Holocaust has been in the Askhenazic world, notably my recent study of the…

Very honored to be speaking with Rabbi Eli Mansour for The WELL, a wonderful new institution dedicated to women’s education in the Sephardic community. Please spread the word! This lecture is open to men and women.

Available from Amazon Hardcover 15% off at Lulu After the fall of the Russian Empire, Jewish and Ukrainian activists worked to overcome previous mutual antagonism by creating a Ministry of Jewish Affairs within the new Ukrainian state and taking other measures to satisfy the national aspirations of Jews and other non-Ukrainians. This bold experiment ended…

After several weeks without recording a drashah, perhaps related to the horrendous typhus outbreak of the late winter of 1941, the Rebbe delivered a series of powerful derashot for the Passover holiday. On the Seventh Day of Pesach he turned his attention to the subject of Torah learning. The memoirs of Chaim Kaplan, a former principal, describe…

Passover in the Warsaw Ghetto: Inspiration for the Second Seder Taken from Torah from the Years of Wrath (Aish Kodesh) אני מבקש ומתחנן לפני כל אחד מישראל שילמוד בספרי, ובטח זכות אבותי הקדושים זצוקלל״ה יעמוד לו ולכל ביתו בזה ובבא “I request and plead every person of Israel to study my works—surely the merit of…

Brief lecture on the life and work of Judah Touro, an important 19th-century American philanthropist for whom, together with his father Isaac, Touro College was named.

School principal Chaim Kaplan recorded the bleak mood in the Warsaw Ghetto on the eve of Passover of the Hebrew year 5701 (1941): Like the Egyptian Passover, the Passover of Germany will be celebrated for generations. The chaotic oppression of every day throughout this year of suffering will be reflected in the days of the…

Really nice to see that readers in my native Canada are encountering the Piaseczno Rebbe: Here’s a new review by Dr. Norman Ravvin, appearing in the current Canadian Jewish News. Note to my dear readers: the book is in Judaica stores, on Amazon and Kindle, but my favorite (and the best value) is the beautiful…


