Queens Jewish Link
Connecting the Queens Jewish Community This week, fans of the New York Yankees are mourning the death of legendary broadcaster John...
During the past four years, my wife and I have had at least one child learning in yeshivah/seminary in Yerushalayim. I had the good fortune to visit and spend a few days in Eretz Yisrael each January.
I was taught the stories of the Torah and of our greatest leaders when I was young and always felt the stories were fascinating and intriguing. But as I have gotten older, I increasingly wonder how it was possible for those heroes to have become as great as they were.
The Vizhnitz cemetery in Monsey has become crowded and busy in recent years. Throngs of people come primarily to daven at the kever of the holy Ribnitzer Rebbe, who lived in the Monsey area, on Old Nyack Turnpike, during his last years.
In 1833, Lord Alfred Tennyson lost his closest friend, Arthur Henry Hallam, when the 22-year-old Hallam died suddenly. Hallam’s death shattered Tennyson’s world.
Before Chanukah, a few weeks ago, my younger children were listening to a kid’s story about Chanukah. The storyteller shared the story behind the custom of playing dreidel. When Torah study had been outlawed by the Syrian-Greek government, the Jews would clandestinely sit together and study Torah with dreidels on hand. When the studying Jews heard the Syrian-Greek soldiers approaching, they immediately hid their scrolls and began playing with their dreidels.
If you’ve ever spoken to an Israeli, you’ve undoubtedly noticed that he or she says “ehhhh” a few times. I don’t have empirical statistics, but experience dictates that, on average, an Israeli says “ehhhh” once or twice per sentence.
