Religious zeal

Rabbi Noach Isaac Oelbaum began his 13th year of learning classics of mussar last month with the sefer Ruach Chayim by Rav Chaim Volozhin. If you have some time, click here to listen to the excellent shiur. If your time is limited, the rabbi tells a great story at the 55 minute mark of the video.


Teacher Writes Song for 7th Graders to Sing About Islam

CNN Reporter Suspended for This Tweet…

Below is an excerpt form the State Department Briefing of November 19th.


QUESTION: ..., the prime minister of Israel basically lumped everything together. He’s saying that the Paris horrible attacks and so on and what is happening in the West Bank are part of the same sort of larger paradigm and the same kind of ideology. Do you believe that? Do you also believe that these incidents are motivated by religious zeal, for instance?

MR KIRBY: I haven’t seen the prime minister’s remarks, so I’m going to refrain from specific comment. And as I have said before, I’m not going to get into parsing and characterizing everything said in that part of the world. What I’ll tell you – back to your asking about our reaction to the stabbings, yes, of course, we’ve seen these reports and condemn in the strongest sense these terrorist attacks against innocent civilians. And as we’ve said many, many times, Said, we remain deeply concerned about the situation there, the violence, and we want to continue to encourage all sides to take affirmative steps to restore the calm and to prevent actions that are only going to further escalate the tensions.

QUESTION: One of them was a soldier. He was not a civilian. One of them -- http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2015/11/249796.htm#ISRAEL

The New York Times reported on victims of the stabbing attack that took place yesterday, as well as the shooting attack. Below is a description of the American. Is this the victim that the journalist described as a soldier? He seems to be the only victim to fit the age category.


I came across a video (second video) which I posted below in which Rabbi Kahane speaks about Jews being stabbed in 1987. Very disheartening to see the situation hasn't changed since then.


Acquaintances of the American victim, Ezra Schwartz, from Sharon, Mass., said he had been spending a gap year in Israel between high school and college and was participating in a program of study and volunteering at a yeshiva in the Israeli city of Beit Shemesh. On the day he was killed, according to Ynet, an Israeli news site, Mr. Schwartz and fellow students had distributed food and candy to Israeli soldiers in the Etzion district and visited a memorial for three Israeli teenagers who were kidnapped and killed in June 2014 after they hitched a ride near where Thursday’s shooting attack took place.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/20/world/middleeast/palestinian-stabs-israelis-in-tel-aviv.html?hpw&rref=world&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0