Current Events

"The first soldier killed in Cast Lead," Benny explained, "was named Dvir. His story touched us, and we decided to name our son after him."

While I was deployed to Iraq, a lone Jewish Marine Corps Officer among hundreds of Iraqi soldiers in a remote region of the Syrian border, I had to live with keeping my religious identity to myself. I couldn't even have "Jewish" on my dog-tags

I surf between CNN, Fox, and the Jerusalem Post scanning photos of our soldiers: rough beards, weary postures. Some raise their fingers in a "V" while supporting wounded comrades. I squint, searching for Akiva's face among them...

Alas for my beautiful Gush Katif that I knew and loved. At this hour I should be standing in my garden; my ankles deep in the lush dark-green grass...

"Wow! He's a hero!" I guess. "You mean he actually can shoot a gun?" I'd hope so! "Did he kill anyone?" I'm not about to ask but I suppose he did. "Is he a general?" No, he's a corporal. "Does he wear a dog tag? What are they for anyhow?" Um...

There was something about the immense love that permeated the home that made it hard to believe that outside those walls, the foundation of everything around us was being ripped to shreds...

400 apartments housing 1,200 people were destroyed or damaged. Tel Aviv hospitals were prepared to handle mass casualties

Why him? From all the people in the crowd, why did the firefighter save my brother-in law?

It was the Monday morning right after the Pittsburgh synagogue attack, and I had not yet determined if and how I would approach the topic with my public school sixth-grade class.

It was the winter of 2008, and Byron Murray was on a journey. The biological son of a teenage Jewish mother and non-Jewish father, Murray was adopted as a newborn baby and raised nominally Conservative in rural Connecticut by warm and loving adoptive pare...