Category: Science and Health

  Freedom,  Beauty and Truth  – Comments before Passover (coinciding with Torah portion VaYikra) Passover is our holiday of freedom. Our tradition provides a wonderful insight on the nature of freedom through a play on words. We find this wordplay in the Talmud, based on Exodus 31:16.  That verse describes Moses coming down from Mt. […]

Rabbi Mordechai Lebhar, the rosh kollel at LINK in Pico-Robertson, understands that the term “rosh kollel” — leader of committed learners — may intimidate some Jews. But LINK, he said, is an outreach kollel. “It doesn’t matter if you are minimally observant, not observant at all or observant,” he said. “Everyone is welcome in the […]

Algeria has charged as a terrorist Boalem Sansal, a former high-ranking Algerian government official, and its most internationally acclaimed writer since Nobel Laureate Albert Camus. Citing his publications and comments to journalists, Algeria has now denied him access to his lawyer Francois Zimeray, saying he is “too Jewish.” Algeria’s shocking barring of French Jewish Zimeray from […]

This is an awful time to explore career options in terrorism—perhaps the worst ever. Its once dreamy cachet has cratered. Choose this treacherous path and you’ll find yourself very much on the move, forever looking over your shoulder. IDF soldiers here; ICE agents there. And there’s absolutely no opportunity for advancement. Every time a new […]

Recently, the Law Student Association (LSA) at UC Davis passed a resolution endorsing the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement. The goal was to prevent LSA funding for companies listed by the BDS National Committee; a flyer announced that there would be “NO FUNDING IF YOUR EVENT HAS THE FOLLOWING” and proceeded to list several major […]

Longtime Jewish communal professional Anita Friedman was honored by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) during the museum’s 2025 Western Region Tribute dinner, held at the Beverly Wilshire, A Four Seasons Hotel, on March 19.  “‘Never again’,” Friedman said, accepting her award, “means never again being in a position of not being able to […]

I’ve always been drawn to the wisdom of a wide range of rabbis — each offering something meaningful to those willing to listen. Over the years, I’ve had the privilege of learning from many and the blessing of counting some of them as friends, but Rabbi Eliyahu Fink stood apart. He had a rare ability […]

Donald Trump wants a Nobel Peace Prize. And he may have decided that Benjamin Netanyahu can make that happen for him. Trump regards the Nobel Prize as the ultimate validation of his presidency. He believes that he deserves it, and he is fashioning his foreign policy agenda to allow him to make that case even […]