Death and Mourning

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Jan 17, 2025, 10:33 AM

Choosing Life over Death: Parshat Shemot

This week has been a hard week for all of us in Israel. It doesn’t matter which side you are on. We are all in pain. We are all waiting. The press is having a field day, playing on...

Jonathan Feldstein

Jan 15, 2025, 9:03 PM

Remembering Olga: A Christian Warrior for Israel

On nearly a daily basis, for most of 470 days, Israel has suffered the death of civilians due to terrorist rockets and missiles, stabbings, and shootings; hostages whose bodies have been recovered and repatriated; and the loss of more...

Jan 9, 2025, 11:35 PM

A tale of two kaddishes

Yizkor Light photographed by Naomi Baum

On this 10th of Tevet, designated a day of 'general mourning,' I focus instead on my mother, my son, and how different losing each of them has been

Jan 8, 2025, 10:54 PM

A Tribute to an African Lioness of Zion

I never cry at all, I am a hero, not a crybaby But why, mother, why Do the Tears cry by themselves? ("Brave Danny", an Israeli children’s song) These past 15 months have been rife with tears, indeed cascades of sorrow, flowing from...

Moshe-Mordechai van Zuiden

Jan 3, 2025, 5:10 PM

Murdering civilians out of idealism, who foresaw this?

How deep have we sunk! I remember and want to recall when idealism stood for something noble, like being altruistic or working on a cure for illness. Who saw coming that millions would have an ideal of mass murder? How is a...

G. Orah Adarah Paris

Jan 2, 2025, 10:35 PM

Parashat Vayigash: Ki Serach Serach

The Talmud (Ketubot 62) recounts the story of Rabbi Chananya ben Chakhinai, who was away from home for a long time studying. One day, his wife unexpectedly saw him standing in the doorway. The shock caused her heart to...

Dec 26, 2024, 9:54 PM

Remembering One Fallen Soldier at a Time

What does it mean to remember? This is a question every one of us have been grappling with since October 7th. The challenge is more acute for those of us living outside of Israel. We are not attending funerals of...

Shira Hecht-Koller

Dec 25, 2024, 9:14 PM

Holding the Holy and the Broken

I’m sitting in a very quiet and calm airport on my way back from the funeral of the brother of a dear and cherished friend (and his extended beloved family) and reflecting on the whirlwind of my last thirty...

Daniel D. Stuhlman

Dec 24, 2024, 10:07 PM

Funeral Preparation — Oninut

Remarks Prepared for Shabbat Dec 14, 2024 at Knesset Israel of Los Angeles. On Sunday December 8 when Rabbi Jason Weiner was in at Congregation Or Torah in Skokie (a suburb of Chicago) I went to hear his presentation. He...

Dec 18, 2024, 11:22 PM

Memoriam: My Sister Menorah Rotenberg—Parshat Vayishlach and Parshat Vayeshev

It is hard to believe that I am writing again, while sitting shiva once again, this time for my older sister (by six years) who died on Shabbat, parshat vayishlach. Despite the geographic distance between the two of us,...

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