Author: David Rutman

Photo Credit: wikimedia This is the excellent foppery of the world: that when we are sick in fortune — often the surfeits of our own behavior — we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and stars, as if we were villains on necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion, knaves, thieves, and treachers by […]

Photo Credit: pixabay There are no boundaries anymore. Life used to be simpler. A man was a man, and a woman was a woman. They would marry, procreate, and pass on. The same cycle would then repeat itself, over and over again, in much the same way. Advertisement ‘); _avp.push({ tagid: article_top_ad_tagid, alias: ‘/’, type: […]

Photo Credit: Jewish Press When it comes to learning Torah, one of the more popular arguments of the yetzer hara is BTDT – Been There Done That. Example: “Why do you have to review this week’s parshah? You know Sefer Bereishis backwards and forwards. Why don’t you dedicate your precious learning time to new frontiers?” […]

Photo Credit: Jewish Press The left-right divide in America is, unfortunately, unbridgeable. There are three reasons: First, we are divided by our vision of what we want America to be. The right believes the founders’ vision was brilliant and moral, that bourgeois middle-class values are superior to alternative value systems; that rights come from G-d, […]

Photo Credit: Flash90 Orthodox Jewish men arrive at the IDF enlistment base near Tel Hashomer, August 1, 2013. IDF data that summarize the last complete recruitment year, 2018, show an alarming rise in the number of exemptions from military service, Maariv reported Friday morning. The figures also show that, in 2018, there was a 30% […]

Photo Credit: Jewish Press My good friend Bleemy, who was brought up in Toronto and now lives in Yerushalayim, told me the following true story in which she played a part. Bleemy’s mother, Rivka, had two sisters, Minnie and Katie. The years went by and Auntie Katie went to live in a senior citizens’ home […]

Photo Credit: Jewish Press “The king of Sodom went out to meet Avraham after his return from defeating the kings…” (Bereishis 14:17). The Medrash (Bereishis Rabbah) relates that all the idol worshippers gathered to chop cedars to form a huge stage. Avraham was seated above and they praised him, saying, “You are our king.” Advertisement […]

Photo Credit: Jewish Press Question: What did our sages mean when they said that anyone who resides outside the Land Israel is like an idol worshipper? Is that what all of us residing outside Israel are – idol worshippers? M. Goldblum(Via E-Mail) Advertisement ‘); _avp.push({ tagid: article_top_ad_tagid, alias: ‘/’, type: ‘banner’, zid: ThisAdID, pid: 16, […]

Photo Credit: FBI.gov Ahlan Tamimi – FBI Wanted Poster The United States has rejected a claim by Jordan over its refusal to extradite wanted Hamas terrorist Ahlam Tamimi, after a Jordanian court ruled in 2017 that Amman’s extradition treaty with Washington is invalid, despite the U.S. State Department saying the opposite in a report published […]

Photo Credit: Ela Faust / Wikimedia ‘Island of Peace’ in Naharayim, in 2009. Jordan has refused an Israeli request to extend a deadline for return of 25-year leased fields in the northern Arava and Naharayim enclaves, in order to enable the Jewish farmers time to harvests their crops before relinquishing the lands leased from Amman […]