Opinion

Rabbi Kalman Topp and his wife Jordana recently announced that they are making aliyah to Israel. For the past 17 years, Rabbi Topp has led Beth Jacob Congregation in Beverly Hills, Calif., one of the area’s largest and most influential Jewish communities. Now he is coming to Israel to establish a new community for new immigrants in Jerusalem.

For the coming year, let every Jew undertake a specific enhancement to one’s Shabbos observance. Let it counterbalance, so to speak, the absence of the spiritual merit of shofar on the first day of Rosh Hashanah.

The 1970s gave us some ridiculous things, although some thought they were pretty cool back then — the fashions, the decor and this meme from the sappy movie, “Love Story”: “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.”

In the aftermath of the Six Day War, Israel took control of the Jordan River Valley and built settlements there. The Jordan River was the favored entry point of Palestinian terrorists into Israel. The Jewish settlements there — literally on the West Bank of the Jordan River — protected Israel against Palestinian terrorism.

I will take anyone’s wager that if Israel tomorrow appointed a new centrist prime minister who immediately pulled the IDF out of Gaza and put a moratorium on settlement expansion, people like Zohran Mamdani and Ed Miliband would still condemn Israel.

What a magical night. A night to celebrate America 250 publicly, with the sacred twist of celebrating this national milestone in the holy city of Jerusalem. This grand event was hosted by the US embassy, the Honorable Ambassador Mike Huckabee and his gracious wife Janet.

There are moments in history seared into collective memory. 
 Twenty-five years ago, the world was tilted on its axis when terrorists hijacked multiple airliners, destroyed lower Manhattan and murdered 2,977 people. We have never fully recovered.

From the micro to the macro: I pray for my heightened focus on each and every word in our prayers and for health for our whole family — and for the excision of the hatred that besets our people and the end to weapons that threaten our people.

At a time when I thought it obvious that nothing else matters like “who shall live and who shall die” — at a time like Rosh Hashanah — I learned that “nothing else matters” means something else to Steve Bannon and to the Jewish attorney general of Michigan, Dana Nessel.

“Kids these days,” goes the age-old lament of the elderly, “are not what they used to be — not as independent, not as disciplined, not as thoughtful.” That lament aligns with the age-old Jewish concept of yeridat hadorot: the idea that each generation is inferior to the one that came before.