Davie, Florida

In America, the July Fourth holiday is a day of picnics, barbecues and fireworks. For me, as for many American Jews, however, it is much more:…

Every year a small village in late medieval Japan faces the terror of being invaded by roving bandits who steal crops and even kill the farmers and…

On October 7, 2001, less than a month after the devastating attacks carried out by Islamic extremists in New York and Washington, Osama bin Laden…

Yehuda Alkalai is one of Jewish history's remarkable figures. Fifty years before Theodor Herzl convened the First Zionist Congress in 1897, Alkalai…

Shavuot is tied to the agricultural cycle of the Land, and is a celebration of God's giving of the Torah at Sinai. As Jewish life unfolded in the…

On May 8, 1945, the day the Allies declared victory over Nazi Germany, a 20-year-old infantry sergeant in the American army wrote a letter home to…

On September 15, 1825, Buffalo, New York was the site of a grand ceremony that might have changed the course of Jewish history. On that day in St.…

I am proud to be an American. One hundred years ago the United States provided a safe haven for my ancestors who were escaping pogroms and poverty…

On February 5, 1840, a Capuchin monk in Damascus vanished without a trace. The missing friar's fellow monks spread a rumor that, with the approach of…

The story of Samson, the great Israelite judge and hero, has delighted, inspired - and even shocked - readers for 3,000 years. Upon closer inspection…

The last days of Adam Czerniakow are a study in the tragedy of powerlessness. For many years before the outbreak of World War II, Czerniakow served…

If Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had a better grasp of the history of the Jewish people, he would have already resigned and repented for his sins.…

Menahem Mendel of Kotsk was one of the great Hasidic masters of the 19th century. One day, according to legend, a Jewish freethinker living in the…