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Shabbat, The Sabbath

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Aug 14, 2026, 7:27 PM

When Shabbos Becomes the Shofar: The Rebbe’s Uplifting Message

When the Shofar Is Silent, Shabbos Speaks There is something striking about entering shul on the first day of Rosh Hashanah and not hearing the shofar. The shofar is the heartbeat of Rosh Hashanah. It is the cry of the Jewish...

Aug 10, 2026, 3:18 PM

Saturday morning at the Basimta protests

Overseen by police, young Haredim sit in an alley outside Cafe Basimta, Shabbat morning, in protest of the cafe being open, August 8, 2026. (courtesy, Ninetin Lu)

PHOTO ESSAY - A flashpoint for debate about Israel's future: The Haredim object to an open cafe on the day of rest and secular activists arrive to ensure their Shabbat coffee

Aug 7, 2026, 6:10 PM

Just a Shabbes. An Inner Magnet of Jewish Cultural Code

Michael Rogatchi (C). Freilax. Daily Miracles collection. Oil on canvas. 77 x 94 cm. 1995. The Rogatchi Art Collection.

Recently, we were lucky to attend a very nice Shabbat gathering on Friday evening, almost literally at the serene Baltic shore of Jurmala in Latvia, near its capital Riga. One can say that it has been one of many Shabbes...

Aug 7, 2026, 12:41 AM

Flowers Ungiven Have No Breath

I started buying flowers on Friday mornings, a bouquet, flowers in my hand. I buy them, like I have someone to buy them for, someone in my heart, someone in my soul. I don't. I buy the flowers. Around town I walk,...

Jul 23, 2026, 7:06 PM

Roseanne Barr Invites Her Fellow Jewish Brothers and Sisters to Set One More Place

From One Empty Chair to a Worldwide Movement: How Ten Days Ignites Jewish Unity Ten days ago, this was simply an idea. Not a political movement. Not a government initiative. Not a campaign backed by a major institution. Just one simple invitation: Set one more...

Linda Pardes Friedburg

Jul 23, 2026, 10:22 AM

Tzur Misgabi – Strengthening Jewish Life in Judea

"Behold, Hashem your God has given you the Land. Go up and inherit it...Do not fear and do not be discouraged." (Devarim 1:21) We must be unequivocal about the rights of Jews to live everywhere in the land of Israel...

Raheli Baratz Rix

Jul 21, 2026, 5:56 PM

Set One More Place at the Table

Every year, on the Shabbat right after Tisha B'Av, we read a haftarah that opens with words that have shaped Jewish identity for centuries: "Comfort, comfort My people, says your God" (Isaiah 40:1). Not comfort once. Comfort twice. It's...

Jul 21, 2026, 6:50 AM

Rest on Shabbat: Acknowledging that We Need to Pause

Continuing to learn from Mussar (Jewish ethics) leaders, I now turn to Rabbi Nosson Tzvi Finkel, known as the Alter (Elder) of Slabodka (1849-1927). The following excerpt is from his work Ohr HaTzafun (The Hidden Light) and was translated...

Jul 14, 2026, 11:05 AM

Halakha’s Kármán Line: Imagined and Real Jews in Space

Ilan Ramon, November 2001, NASA, https://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/sts-107/images/high/KSC-02PP-0490.jpg, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ilan_Ramon,_NASA_photo_portrait_in_orange_suit.jpg, cropped

In the late 1960s or early 1970s, when Rabbi Solomon B. Freehof – the most prolific author of responsa in the American Reform movement – was asked for sources in Jewish law in preparation for “a discussion of the...

Jul 7, 2026, 1:13 PM

Cosmic Moods: Reform Judaism Meets the Space Age

Rabbi Solomon B. Freehof in his younger years. American Jewish Archives. https://www.americanjewisharchives.org; https://press.huc.edu/pittsburgh-book-launch.
Rabbi Solomon B. Freehof, New Reform Responsa (Philadelphia: The Hebrew Union College Press, 1980), which included a responsum titled “Halacha and Space Travel.”

In 1970 – soon after the lunar landing – the most prolific respondent in American Reform Judaism and an expert on responsa literature, Rabbi Solomon Bennett Freehof (1892-1990), published an article in the Jewish Book Annual, titled “Recent Responsa...

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