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May 31, 2026, 2:37 PM

Searching for the Shalshelet

Where I'm from, we call a shalshelet a ta'am and refuse to forget that it is written with an ayin rather than an aleph.

Finals are officially over, which means I have the headspace to think about something other than chemistry. I am delighted. This is what I’m thinking about: the boy across the table who is really more of a man, but he’s...

May 27, 2026, 4:20 AM

Why the Chareidi & Dati Leumi Divide Goes Deeper Than Strictness

We are looking inside a world that outsiders flatten (David Katash, FrockInStock.com).

It is not a frumkeit ranking, but a question of religious instinct, cultural memory, and which world feels like home. Recently, I saw an online discussion on Imamother — a popular online forum for frum women — about whether there...

May 20, 2026, 4:44 AM

Shavuot, an Almost Forgotten Festival

The Jewish calendar contains three major pilgrimage festivals: Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot, collectively known as the Shalosh Regalim, the “Three Pilgrimage Festivals.” In Temple times, Jews would travel to Jerusalem to celebrate the festivals at the Beit HaMikdash, the...

Dennis C. Sasso

May 12, 2026, 5:16 AM

ONE (JEWISH) WEEK IN PANAMA

Rabbi Dennis C. Sasso (This serves as a sequel to my previous Times of Israel Blog (May 3, 2026), “150 Years of Jewish Life in Panama.”) Going to Panama is always a homecoming for me. I was born and educated in...

Sam Lehman-Wilzig

May 8, 2026, 11:26 AM

Israel & the Diaspora Moving Apart: Déjà Vu All Over Again

The relationship between Israel and world Diaspora Jews, especially American Jewry, has been deteriorating these past few years. So what else is new? This is a process that has been going on for the past 2,500 years, ever since the...

Dennis C. Sasso

May 3, 2026, 5:06 AM

150 Years of Jewish Life in Panama

Rabbi Dennis C. Sasso The Jewish community of Panama, the oldest in Central America, celebrates this month the 150th Anniversary of its founding. The beginnings of Jewish history in the Americas are as old as the discovery of the New World,...

Eliezer Avraham

May 1, 2026, 1:44 AM

The Threads We Carry

AI Generated Illustration

Reflections on gratitude, heritage, and the giants who shaped our community LIVING LEGACY: CARRYING FEZ INTO THE FUTURE How one man’s journey reminds us what it means to build home, history, and hope A Life That Spanned Continents and Centuries Attending the memorial...

Apr 22, 2026, 12:17 AM

What the Arab World Taught Us About Anti-Zionism Long Before Ezra Klein

Image from JIMENA's Distinctions Journal, 2025

Dear Ezra Klein, I am a Jewish community leader based in San Francisco, California, directing a national nonprofit that focuses on advancing the heritage, history, and rights of nearly one million Jewish refugees from North Africa and the Middle East....

Apr 14, 2026, 5:48 PM

What Your Jewish Friends Can’t Say

What Your Jewish Friends Can't Say

If you have Jewish friends, they're probably feeling something right now that they're not telling you. Not because they don't trust you. Because every time they've tried to say it, the conversation ends. They get labeled. Dismissed. Told to "wake...

Mustapha Ezzarghani

Apr 14, 2026, 1:19 AM

Morocco: A Throne That Stood by Its Jews

There is a quiet truth about Morocco that many people outside of it never fully grasp. Jewish life there is not a chapter added later, nor a passing presence shaped by circumstance. It is something far older, rooted in...

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