Diary Sept. 25, outgoing Rosh Hashanah, A normal rabbi is busy preparing his speeches for the synagogue services on Erev (the eve of) Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. In addition, he will assist his wife with the preparation of the elaborate and festive Yom Tov meals, which will of course be attended by guests.

The Alter Rebbe, the founder of Chabad Hasidism, the movement within Judaism to which I belong, was the regular weekly Baal Kore, the person who reads from the Torah. When he was not in Lyozna on the Shabbat when parsha Tawo (Deuteronomy 27) was read, as it will be this coming Shabbat, his son, who

The Sidra for the coming Shabbat begins with the commandment to “appoint judges and law enforcement officers at all your gates.” When I follow the news, look around me, and see how our society is threatened by anarchy, I can only say that this ancient Jewish Torah commandment may be old, but it is far

The last few days I have been a full-time sjnorrer. A sjnorrer sounds exciting, but it’s just a beggar. In modern times, we no longer have sjnorrer, because begging is not proper, but in the Jewish world we are referred to as fundraisers. And because more than two hundred children have registered for the Chabad

Binyomin, a non-Jewish politician, told me the day after the infamous PvdA-GL meeting that the PvdA-GL’s hatred of Israel affects not only the Jewish community, but also me, your non-Jewish Dutch fellow citizen. In 1948, the State of Israel was established as a refuge for Jews, survivors of the gas chambers. We, the Dutch, had

I have just returned home from a lecture given by the former director of the National Monument Camp Amersfoort about the history of the camp, before and after the war. I went there with the expectation and hope of finally hearing the secret of Camp Amersfoort. Why was there such enormous opposition from the government