By: Richard McBee Date: Wednesday, December 01 2010 Why is the menorah such a powerful and long-lasting symbol of the Jewish people?  After all, its lure ostensibly originates in a relatively minor rabbinic festival, Hanukah.  No disrespect intended, but how can Hanukah compare to the great pilgrimage festivals, Passover, Shavous and Succos or the Days […]

by Dr. Rafael Medoff (Israelnationalnews.com) These days the United States media’s sports pages sometimes resemble a police blotter. One of baseball’s most famous pitchers has been indicted for perjury and lying to Congress. A champion cyclist is under investigation for using steroids. A college basketball star has been suspended for assaulting his girlfriend. In times […]

Nearly two decades into the 20th century, Jews were suffering the horrors of pogroms, mass expulsions, starvation and disease in Eastern Europe while Jewish soldiers in various armies were enduring the carnage of the battlefield. Amid the horrors, however, a glimmer of hope appeared.   During the First World War, two powers fought over control […]

by David Lev (Israelnationalnews.com) Jews young and old know the story of Chanukah – the persecution of the Jews at the hands of the Seleucid Syrian-Greek Hellenists, the dramatic uprising of a small Jewish group that took on the mightiest armies of the day, and the highlight of the holiday – the miracle of the […]

By Avi Lazerson We are accustomed today that each evening of Chanukah we add an additional candle. But this was not always the custom. The Talmud teaches us that each household would have only one single candle lit in only one window each night for the entire household. That was the basic custom, but there […]

By: Elliot Resnick, Jewish Press Staff Reporter Political intrigue. Backroom discussions. Revealing portraits. These and more fill the pages of a new memoir by Ambassador Yehuda Avner, The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership (Toby Press). Hailed as the “ultimate insider’s account,” this 731-page book reveals hitherto unknown stories based on recollections and […]

Greenberg at 100: the greatest slugger time has forgotten. David G. Dalin When he died in 1986 at the age of 75, Hank Greenberg was widely acknowledged to have been the greatest Jewish player in the history of baseball. His achievements were beyond merely great—they were monumental. He played in the major leagues from 1933 […]

Gracia Mendes lived during the turbulent times after the expulsion from Spain. Her family remained in Portugal after the 1497 forced conversions, and lived as secret Jews. Her name to the outside world is Beatrice de Luna. She is married to Francisco Mendes, one of two brothers who controls a growing trading company. The House […]

by David Krakow One aspect of the Shoah has received little attention from Holocaust scholars: The obstruction by Britain of the most important avenue of escape available to the doomed Jews of Europe before and during World War II. The Danube River, flowing from the middle of Europe to the Black Sea, was an international […]

JEWISH SPIES FOR THE BRITISH IN PALESTINE – WORLD WAR I by yonatan silverman Three decades before the founding of the State of Israel, in the days of Ottoman Palestine, and the pioneering Jewish settlements of the first and second Aliyah, there was an extraordinary, enterprising Jewish spy group which was known by the acronym […]