Book of Lamentations

IN A GENERATION when the web of life on Earth is in profound danger, when human intervention is wounding that web and with it the patterns of human…

After reliving the dark days of destruction through the reading of Lamentations and innumerable dirges on Tisha Be’av, how pleasant and inspiring it…

Observant and secular Israelis alike crowded places of worship Monday night to mark Tisha Be’av, the day of fasting and mournful contemplation…

Asheknazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger will visit Noam and Aviva Schalit's protest tent outside the prime minister's residence to read Megillat Eicha on…

Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger prayed for the swift return of Gilad Schalit Monday night at a special reading of the Book of Lamentations with…

When it comes to commemorating history, we Jews are remarkably adept. Shortly we will begin a period of three weeks when we recall the events that…

Sitting in the small women’s gallery beneath the vaulted dome of the newly rebuilt Hurva Synagogue, I find my mind wandering easily. It is not just…

Michal Barkai is a tour guide who specializes in guiding schoolchildren in the Jerusalem area. A month ago, she arrived with a group of 18-year-old…

Here in this humid and leafy village in eastern Uganda 20 minutes from the Kenyan border, 16 American college students sit in a circle. They are…

Q Is there a mitzva to live in Israel?- N.H., New YorkA The choice to live in Israel, an option with which we are uniquely blessed today, encompasses…

The lessons of Tisha b'Av Judaism is doctrine, traditional practice, ethnicity and cultural norms. Linking all of them is national history. Most…

The presence of IDF soldiers at the Western Wall is a sign of destruction and desolation, a Shas functionary wrote in a newspaper column for Tisha…

Last Thursday night my wife and I had plans to attend an open-air screening of the Jerusalem Film Festival in the garden of Beit Ticho. We set out…

I spent my adolescent years in a North American metropolis and remember the chilling refrain on the evening radio: "It's 10 p.m. Do you know where…

The Babylonian sage Rav Ketina was once walking along the road (B. Brachot 59a). When he passed the door of a necromancer, the ground thundered with…

Perhaps we expect too much of priests, rabbis and imams. We want our clergy to be spiritual beacons, above the temporal fray; and to be politically…

Pope Benedict XVI on Monday paid tribute to the memory of six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust, pledging to work tirelessly to prevent such…

The past two years have been a whirlwind for Eliezer "Laizy" Shapira. As the air date for the finale of the first season of Srugim approaches, the…

Built by King Solomon about 950 BCE and destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BCE because of flagrant sin in the nation, the Temple was rebuilt about…

I didn't want to go to Theresienstadt, I told my wife. We would have only a few days in Prague and, for once, I wanted to walk the streets and see…