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Visions for Tomorrow

Rabbi Reuven Ibragimov

So many of us want to grow… so badly. We commit to growth, however, it’s all too often that we just don’t. Then there are others who do not feel any compelling reason to grow. Rosh Hashanah is the time for transformation and new beginnings. But what forces can we draw on to power that growth?

Discomfort is potentially the most powerful fuel for growth. No one likes to…

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A Nazi’s Grandson Cried at my Grandfather’s Grave!

A Nazi’s Grandson Cried at my Grandfather’s Grave!

DR. FAYE ZAKHEIM

I recently joined RAJE on a trip that was deeply meaningful for me personally. We took the students to Vienna on the way to Israel.

I am a child of Holocaust survivors. My father was in Auschwitz, Buchenwald and Bergen Belsen, had numbers branded on his arm and only he and my uncle survived from a very large family.

My mother miraculously survived Mauthausen…

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The Inner Dimensions of the 17th of Tammuz and the 3 weeks

The Inner Dimensions of the 17th of Tammuz and the 3 weeks

By Rabbi Johnny Kersh 

The 17th of Tammuz is a day on the Jewish calendar, marred by several national calamities, of which we make no secret. Among them: the worshipping of The Golden Calf, the smashing of the first of the sets of the Ten Commandments, the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem, when it’s once ‘impenetrable’ walls were reduced to rubble, and the public burning of a Torah scroll by the…

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Ron Hersh, Philanthropist, Founder and Jewish Activist

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Rabbi G's Passover Message 2019

Rabbi G’s Passover Message 2019

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(C)leaning Toward Freedom

By: Yafo Mardakhayeva

In my native language, the word for the holiday of Pesach is known as Nisonu, obviously taken from the month in which it belongs, Nisan. Even if the Soviet Union tried to dismantle Judaism for the far away Jews of the Caucasus’, our redemption will come from the frenzy that goes on to really prepare for Pesach and clean the whole house from top to bottom to get rid…

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Did Someone Say “Seder”?

Did Someone Say “Seder”?

By: Boris Braverman

Do you remember your first Pesach? I do. I was a young child, 4-5 years old at the time. My family, like many of yours, had recently emigrated from the Soviet Union. We were getting by everyday with the dreams and hopes that your rigorous efforts to move were not in vain and that we’d be able to live out our dreams of success, integration into American life, and…

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It’s no secret among those who know me well: By: Fanya Donin

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Purim Perspective from a Millennial

Purim Perspective from a Millennial

By: Fanya DoninRaje Manhattan 2018-2019

The Jewish holiday of Purim is quickly approaching, and I honestly couldn’t be more excited. We commemorate how the Jewish nation was saved from the wicked Haman who had planned to kill us all. And growing up, I always found the best part of the story to be that the hero was a woman, Esther. It made me feel empowered, like maybe I too could one day…

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Purim- Analysis of Haman’s Ten Sons

Purim- Analysis of Haman’s Ten Sons

By: Danielle Ostrovsky Raje Manhattan 2018-2019

When one opens up any book of historical significance, one is not only putting him or herself in the context of a basic plotline; rather, one is immersing him or herself in the many layers and secrets that is contained within the period of time. One book that not only defines the characteristic of secretive knowledge being tucked away for…

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Exodus: Soviet Jewry and a Revival of Jewish Identity

Exodus: Soviet Jewry and a Revival of Jewish Identity

Larisa Shagabayeva

During Passover, we read these words from “Exodus:” “In days to come when your son asks you ‘What does this mean?’ Say to him, ‘With a mighty hand the Lord brought us out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery (13:14).” As a student in yeshivah (Jewish day school), I found these biblical words ancient and not applicable to my own life. After all, I grew up in a secular…

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Bella Abramovna and the Jewish People's University

Bella Abramovna and the Jewish People’s University

This Soviet mathematician founded an underground Jewish university and was likely assassinated by the KGB.

By Dr. Yvette Alt Miller

When Bella Abramovna, a young Jewish girl in the Soviet Union, was six, someone gave her a middle school math book. It was a huge volume with thousands of mathematical problems. Bella had solved them all within a month.

Bella lived with her mother in World…

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Why was Yosef Mendelevich so determined to light the Chanukah candles?

Why was Yosef Mendelevich so determined to light the Chanukah candles?

Not so long ago, the entire Soviet Union was one huge prison. Its citizens were deprived of many freedoms we take for granted, including the right to practice our religion and live anywhere we choose, or even to emigrate to another country if we so desire. Any Russian citizen who wanted to leave the Soviet Union was considered a traitor to his country. In increasing numbers, the Jews of Russia…

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Who was Two-Gun Cohen?

Who was Two-Gun Cohen?

Who was Two-Gun Cohen?  by The Cape Jewish Chronicle The Chinese president’s Jewish confidant who mustered Chinese support of the creation of Israel.

Despite the various accounts written of this powerful and colorful figure of the early part of the last century, few people have actually heard of Morris Abraham ‘Two-Gun’ Cohen. A glance into the Encyclopedia Judaica reveals that he really did…

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Jewish Identity Vs. Universalism

Jewish Identity Vs. Universalism

by Natan Sharansky* The choice between freedom and identity is a false one.

Twenty years ago to this day, the Berlin Wall fell. Two great wars were being waged in those years. The first was a worldwide struggle to free Soviet Jewry — a cause which galvanized Jews across the globe as no other cause had, since the establishment of the State of Israel. The second was the Cold War, the struggle of…

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Elvis Presley’s Jewish Roots 

by Dan Fellner

I was all shook up in Mississippi.

Inside a museum next to the modest two-room house where Elvis Presley was born in 1935 in Tupelo, Miss., visitors will find all the things you’d expect to see in a shrine celebrating the early years of a boy who would grow up to become the King of Rock ‘N’ Roll.

There are guitars, childhood photographs, old record albums, performance costumes and…

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Want Your Kids to Remain Jewish? Better Start Early

Want Your Kids to Remain Jewish? Better Start Early

by Peter Lovenheim The growing field of attachment theory suggests that our religious affiliations later in life are determined chiefly in our first years.

Many Jewish parents and communal leaders ask how can we increase the odds that our kids, when grown, will remain Jewish. Day schools, summer camps, and visits to Israel are important, of course, but I’ve recently been studying the field of…