Category: Science and Health

  Hearing the Silent Aleph –   Vayakhel   ©️Rabbi Mordecai Finley, 2025   This week’s Torah portion, Va-yakhel, is the first of two Torah portions concerned with the building of the Mishkan. In next week’s portion, Pekudei, we find the actual dedication of the Mishkan. I would like to focus in these few words […]

Perhaps it was accidental that Joel Nickerson was selected as the new senior rabbi of Wilshire Boulevard Temple (WBT) on Oct. 6, 2023, the day, he noted, before the world changed forever. “A new level of access was open. I was empowered to ask questions that wouldn’t have been appropriate for me to ask previously. […]

My first trip to Israel in 1977 was life-changing. I had come to learn in a yeshiva, but the experience ignited something much deeper. The land, the history, and the spiritual depth of Israel sparked a passion that I would carry with me for the rest of my life. Although I settled in Los Angeles […]

For as long as I can remember, the Holocaust has represented for me the complete and utter absence of physical freedom. I’ve seen Holocaust films where Jews fought back, found meaning in the smallest things, tried like hell to maintain some dignity and Jewish customs, used their talents to improve their survival odds, and so […]

Imagine a Nazi sympathizer from Germany living in New York City and studying at Columbia. He’s not a U.S. citizen, but he has a green card. For many months, he has been leading protests on campus with fellow Ku Klux Klan members where he promotes a hateful, racist agenda. After being arrested and targeted for […]

On November 6th, I embarked on a life-changing journey to Uganda with six other students from de Toledo High School. Our mission was to work alongside Semei Kakungulu High School students, sharing knowledge and learning together about spirulina. This remarkable superfood, packed with protein and nutrients, holds immense potential to combat hunger. Exploring spirulina’s potential […]

Eerie music plays as a fanged Dracula rises from his coffin. A clawed wolf man howls at a luminescent moon. Reptilian, scaled Godzilla demolishes New York City with a deafening roar. Monsters haunt our imaginations; they send chills down our spines that instill fear, dread, and hatred. With the release, and rapid popularity of the […]

In 1772, a short pamphlet, Zmir Aritzim V’charvot Tzurim was published near Brody, Ukraine. In it were a series of condemnations and edicts against the new Chasidic movement, including an excommunication signed by the Rabbis of Vilna, among them the famed Gaon, Rav Eliyahu. The letters from various communities depicted the Chasidim as people uninterested […]

“My name is Gal, and I am Jewish.” “Isn’t it crazy that just expressing such a simple fact about who I am feels like a controversial statement?” asked Gal Gadot, upon accepting the ADL’s International Leadership Award at the annual “Never Is Now” conference in New York City. “But sadly, this is where we’re at […]