Life in the Shadow of the Akedah

It was a question that crossed the line. Shaul Amsterdamski was interviewing Rabbi Tamir Granot, who had lost his son Amitai in battle a week after the October 7th war started.  Amsterdamski asked Granot to respond to a phrase some use (borrowed from Harry Potter) to negatively describe Religious Zionists: “Death eaters.” These critics accuse […]

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Things Done on Highway 61

    Highway 61 Things Done on Highway 61 (Shabbat Vayeira 2024) Rabbi Mordecai Finley    (adapted from earlier versions) Highway 61 runs from the city of Wyoming in Minnesota, down in to New Orleans. It also runs through a desolate region where the rivers of dread and destiny merge.   It is the road […]

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After the Pogrom

In cities throughout the Netherlands, you can’t walk far without coming across a Stolperstein, or “stumbling stone”: a small brass plaque in the sidewalk commemorating a Jewish victim of the Nazi regime. The plaques are intended to jolt passersby into pained remembrance. “Hier woonde,” the plaque reads—here lived—a person with this name, born on this […]

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Of Dutch Pogroms and American Politics

The Dutch didn’t have an opportunity to participate in Kristallnacht back on November 9-10, 1938–those two days of antisemitic wilding in Germany and Austria when the low-life Master Race murdered nearly 100 of the Chosen People on city streets like Berlin and Vienna, ransacked and torched 7,000 Jewish homes and businesses, destroyed 1,000 synagogues and […]

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