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Oct. 13, 2008

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Happiness Quotient

Jonathan Rosenblum: Ignore the Grandchildren

Oct. 10, 2008

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: The limitations of scientific miracles

Caroline B. Glick: Lebanon on the brink --- and why it matters

Oct. 8, 2008

Rabbi Berel Wein: The day when the sane talk to themselves

Ana Veciana-Suarez: Many nonobservant Jews are finding religion

Oct. 7, 2008

Gary Rosenblatt: Of politics and prayer

Caroline B. Glick: The ironies of the West's collusion with the Arabs and Iran

Oct. 6, 2008

Rabbi Yitzchok R. Rubin: Mamma to the masses

Jonathan Tobin: Ahmadinejad Isn't Too Impressed

Oct. 3, 2008

Rabbi A. Henach Leibowitz: The 'living dead' are all around us

Caroline B. Glick: Olmert's parting blows

Oct. 2, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q: Often customers looking for our competitor accidentally enter our store. Can we just serve them without comment?

Jonathan Tobin: Jewish pundit quiz on next year's news

Sept. 29, 2008

Rabbi Eli Gewirtz: Lehman Brothers and the Day of Judgment

Rabbi Leiby Burnham: Apples, Honey and You

Sept. 26, 2008

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The shofar and the Echo of Sinai

Caroline B. Glick: A road paved on reality

Sept. 24, 2008

Greg Crosby: Home for the Holy Days

Ethel G. Hofman: Rosh Hashanah Favorites: Old-fashioned taste, reduced calories

Sept. 23, 2008

Caroline Glick: Liberalism or lives!?

Michael Ledeen: Dear President Ahmadinejad

Sept. 22, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q: I gave a check to a local merchant, but it hasn't been cashed in months. Probably they lost it. Do I have to tell them?

Diana West: We are losing Europe to Islam

Sept. 19, 2008

Rabbi Berel Wein: On harvesting success

Caroline B. Glick: It is time to act

Sept. 18, 2008

Rabbi Hillel Goldberg: Is camping the panacea to save Jewry from self-destruction?

Craig Gordon: Was SNL hilarity too much for Hillary?

Sept. 17, 2008

Jonathan Tobin: The Whole World Is Watching

The Kosher Gourmet By Linda Gassenheimer: East meets Southwest in this quick meal: MEXICAN-ASIAN TOSTADOS

Sept. 16, 2008

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. : Into the fire

Everything's Relative : Your Official Jewish Guide to the 2008 USA Presidential Election

Sept. 15, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Enabling risky behavior

Diana West: A day that will live in ... accommodating Islam

Sept. 11, 2008

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The skeleton in my closet

Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein: Persecution and systematic destruction of Christians in the Middle East must be stopped

Sept. 10, 2008

Jonathan Tobin: There's Something About Sarah

The Kosher Gourmet by Kathy Manweiler: Who needs Chili's when you have these? Recipes for Mexican that taste great and are dietetic! Our commitment to freedom

Sept. 9, 2008

Daniel Pipes: Must counterinsurgency wars fail?

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.:

Sept. 8, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: How far must one go to help somebody out of a contract?

Barry Rubin: Waiting For Something

Sept. 8, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : How far must one go to help somebody out of a contract?

Barry Rubin: Waiting For Something

March 22, 2007

J-Rhythms with Avraham Rosenblum: JWR's cutting-edge music program showcasing performers -- singers, song writers, musicians, and bands -- who learn and live the Torah lifestyle (OUR NEWEST IGODCAST !)

Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review June 4, 2008 / 1 Sivan 5768

A different sort of ‘religious broadcaster’

By Jonathan Rosenblum

An observant Jew's actions are constantly scrutinized. It's an immense responsibility that pays an equally high reward


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | When a radio transmitter transmits sound waves, there is no way of knowing who will receive the signals. To pick up the radio signals, the recipient must have a radio and the radio must be tuned to a particular frequency.

We are all in the same situation as that radio transmitter. We are constantly sending messages — some verbal and some through our behavior. With respect to the messages conveyed by our behavior, we often have no idea as to who will pick up the messages. That depends on who is watching, and more importantly who has an eye to see.

Of those messages that we are transmitting perhaps the most important are those that convey what it means to be a Jew whose life is shaped by Torah. Every moment, we have the potential to make a Kiddush Hashem, to sanctify G-d — or the opposite. Heightening the awareness that we are always broadcasting deepens everything we do as a Jew.

A grade school teacher once asked a class of eight-year-olds what is a tzaddik, a truly righteous person. One answered that a tzaddik is someone who fasts every Monday and Thursday; another that a tzaddik is someone who immerses himself in religious studies through the night. Finally, one little girl piped up and said, "My tatte [father] says a tzaddik is someone who does what is right."

That last definition encompasses a great deal of wisdom. For one thing, it implies that every moment there is always a right and wrong thing to do. Each moment presents us with an opportunity to go up or go down on the spiritual ladder. But there is no standing still — ever. If we start to view life in this fashion, we become reflective human beings, and not just creatures of habit.

In a similar fashion, an awareness of the potential ramifications of everything we do makes us more alive, thinking beings. For that reason, I make something of a hobby of collecting stories that demonstrate the immense impact of seemingly innocuous actions.


Recently, I received a sermon-ette from Rabbi Yitzchok Eisenman of Passaic, New Jersey. His subject that particular morning was a woman whom he had accompanied on her journey from Leilani, a young woman from the Philippines, to Leah. That journey began with a chance encounter as she left the public library one day, just as three yeshiva [rabbinical] students were walking by the library.

The behavior of one of the budding scholars so piqued her curiosity that she was filled with the desire to understand why he had acted as he did. On the spot, she turned around and went back into the library to learn something about Judaism.

What had the yeshiva bochur done that made such an impression on Leilani? Did he greet her pleasantly? No, he ignored her, or, to be more precise, he quickly averted his eyes and turned the other direction as they passed one another. By the standards of the world, there was nothing out of the ordinary about Leilani's dress. But by the Torah's standards of tznius, modesty, her attire fell short. And that is what caused the rabbi-to-be to turn to the side.

His gesture did not pass unnoticed, precisely because it was so far from anything Leilani had ever experienced. As an attractive young woman, she had never before had someone make a deliberate effort to avoid looking at her.

That particular rabbinical student will have no idea, until he reaches the Next World of the spiritual tumult he set off with that one gesture. He will go through life never imagining that he, like the patriarch Abraham played a major role in bringing a neshoma under the wings of the Shechinah.


No less important to remember, of course, is that the potential for doing good is inevitably linked with a corresponding potential for the opposite. Recently, I was speaking on this topic in the Bais Yaakov high school of Los Angeles. I told a story of how the lives of three brothers and two friends — today all respected Torah scholars — took a totally unexpected turn as a consequence of the impression made on one of them by a family coming out of the Los Angeles Kollel after Sabbath morning prayers.

I pointed out that had the religious father been giving his young son a slap at the exact moment he passed in front of a local bistro instead of holding his hand and smiling, five Jews and all the subsequent generations that will come out of them would likely have been lost. When I had finished, I repaired to the office of the principal Rabbi Yoel Bursztyn, who shared with me a story from his days as a post-graduate rabbinical student, which emphasized the point I had made.

He told me about a neighbor of his from those days — an elderly, non-religious Jew. On one occasion, Rabbi Burzstyn's neighbor agreed to help make up a minyan, religious quorum, in a shiva house. Afterwards, he told him the following story about his youth.

He had been born in Europe, and his mother passed away when he and his sister were very young. Eventually, the family immigrated to Philadelphia. They were extremely poor, so poor that the brother and sister had to walk miles each way to school because they did not have the nickel fare for the trolley.

One day, the young boy went to synagogue to recite the Kaddish mourning prayer on the anniversary of his mother's death, yahrtzeit. After services, an elderly man came over to him, and asked him whether he had yahrtzeit. The boy nodded. "So where's the herring and schnaps?" the old man asked, questioning why he hadn't fulfilled the local custom of providing food in the departed soul's merit and memory. Having assured himself that no food would be forthcoming, the old man told him, "This you call a yahrtzeit? Pheh."

The boy was too humiliated to say anything, He rushed home and threw himself on his bed sobbing. His father passed by his son's room, and saw how distraught he was. When the boy related what had happened, he added a vow, "Father, I swear to you, I will never set foot in a synagogue again." And he never did.

Can any of us begin to fathom the joy of discovering for the first time in Heaven that we provided the impetus for one journey to Truth? Or, for that matter, the shame of learning that because of an unthinking, offhand remark of ours a Jew never again set foot in synagogue? .

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JWR contributor Jonathan Rosenblum is founder of Jewish Media Resources and a widely-read columnist for the Jerusalem Post's domestic and international editions and for the Hebrew daily Maariv. He is also a respected commentator on Israeli politics, society, culture and the Israeli legal system, who speaks frequently on these topics in the United States, Europe, and Israel. His articles appear regularly in numerous Jewish periodicals in the United States and Israel. Rosenblum is the author of seven biographies of major modern Jewish figures. He is a graduate of the University of Chicago and Yale Law School. Rosenblum lives in Jerusalem with his wife and eight children.






© 2008, Jonathan Rosenblum