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With Shavuot past, we now come to the second cycle in the weekly study of the Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers). While the core observance of this study is between Pesach and Shavuot, the …
As he readies for this year’s 100th Agudah Convention, Rabbi Naftali Miller shares his unlikely story
Vyacheslav Golev, killed by two Palestinian terrorists while guarding the West Bank settlement, was buried in Beit Shemesh.
From the blog of Leonard Grunstein at Jewish Standard
However, the 33 rd day of the Omer (Lag B’Omer[iii]) is an exception, because the dying stopped on that day[iv]. Lag B’Omer is also said to be the Yahrzeit[v] of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, an illustrious figure in the Talmud. He was one of Rabbi Akiva’s latter set of students, during the penultimate part of his life, who carried on with the mission of upholding[vi] and filling the Land of Israel[vii] with Torah. For these reasons, it is customary to observe Lag B’Omer as a semi-festival[viii]. What, though, was so special about these twenty-for thousand students and what did they do tha...