ultra orthodox vs Israel's supreme court

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Rabbi Jonah Layman

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Shalom Hartman Institute - Jewish Scholarship, Education, Leadership for Israel, Diaspora

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Rosh Hashanah Day 1 - 2015/5776 Making Peace With the Enemy

I can remember the moment as if it happened yesterday. It was Shabbat afternoon November 20, 1977. My parents and I had just finished eating lunch. We turned on the TV to watch a remarkable moment in Israel’s history unfold before our eyes. President Anwar Sadat of Egypt was about to arrive in Israel. With tears in our eyes we watched as his plane touched down - imagine a plane with Arabic writing landing in Tel Aviv! We watched Prime Minister Menachem Begin shake Sadat’s hand and embrace him. We watched as Sadat shook hands with Golda Meir and then listened as Israel’s army band played Egypt’s national anthem. No one in their wildest imagination just 4 years before could have ever imagined that such a moment could arrive. Surely the messiah would arrive too! Even though I was only 15 at the time I still understood the context for that remarkable moment. I had followed the Yom Kippur war as a 6th grade student in my Jewish Day School and I had the assignment of summarizing the ...

Yom Kippur Yizkor - 2024-5785 - We Must Still Have Hope

Back in July, after Lenore and I were in Jerusalem, we traveled to Prague for a few days. I had never been before but I had learned a lot about the city. The popular medieval Jewish legend of the Golem created by Rabbi Judah Lowe to save the Jews from attack was based there. The “Old New Synagogue” where that rabbi prayed and was built in 1270 is still in use today and Lenore and I attended shabbat evening services there. And the Charles bridge built in the 1300s has a statue of Jesus on the cross with golden Hebrew letters around him spelling out, “holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.” Jews have been in Prague and the Czech Republic for over 1,000 years and of course, like everywhere else in Europe, their freedom and safety were tenuous, until the Nazis nearly wiped them out. The most impactful part of our stay in Prague which highlights that community’s devastation was our tour of Theresienstadt . Many of us may be familiar with...

Kol Nidre Sermon - 2016

Kol Nidre – 2016 Leadership and the Presidential Election This past February CNN hosted a town hall meeting in Nashua, NH with the democratic candidates Sen. Bernie Sanders and Secretary Hillary Clinton. Audience members were called on to ask questions about jobs, immigration, foreign policy, etc., until the end when Rabbi Jonathan Spira-Savett of the Conservative synagogue in Nashua - Temple Beth Abraham - was given the microphone. Rabbi Spira-Savett quoted the 18 th & 19 th century Hassidic Rabbi Simhah Bunam: “Every person should have certain words written on scraps of paper in each of two pockets, so that [he/she] can reach into one or the other to take what is needed at the time. In one pocket should be the words, ‘For my sake was the world created.’ In the other pocket should be the words: ‘I am dust and ashes.’” [1] Then the rabbi asked only Hillary Clinton the following, “ I want you to take a mome...

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