By Shmuel Landesman – 2 Adar 5783 – February 22, 2023 Rav Abba Bronspigel, popular rosh yeshiva at RIETS and founding rosh yeshiva of Bais Medrash L’Talmud at Lander College for Men, died on Shabbos, February 18 in Lakewood, N.J.…
An extensive six- day manhunt for a missing American Yeshiva student came to an end at 5pm today when a United Hatzalah volunteer located a young man’s body among shrubbery in the Ein Kerem neighborhood of Jerusalem that is…
Lander College for Men is a fine institution of higher Jewish learning. It’s not an easy school to get into and an even harder school to graduate from based on the demanding schedule. I did it, though personally it wasn’t easy.…
In 2004 I was in Landers and had recently read the R’ Aryeh Kaplan reader, cover to cover. In one of the essays R’ Kaplan mentioned the joy of finding old Sifrei Kodesh, where the pages were made from…
This past Shabbos I read in the Jewish Press Op-Ed section about a Torah-observant mother, who sent her two older children through the Yeshiva system, being forced to send her youngest to public school this year. Also, a few months…
While looking for shiurim from my Alma Mater, Landers, I came across this blog post. It takes me back since I graduated from there in 2005 and I remember Dovid Yudkowitz, Rabbi Bamberger, and the rest of the Chevra. The…
We all know of the classic picture of the Chofetz Chaim, a sweet elderly Rabbi whose face literally glows in the picture. The question is, however, is this the right one? Some say that the classic picture is of the…
Recently the Shavuot Song “Stay Up All Night” has spread and become popular. Some bored Kollel guys it seems made a Jewish song out of a Cha-cha.
Question is, do we really need to stay up all night? As I understand it, since Shavuot is the holiday of receiving the Torah we should simply learn more that night than other days. However with “a little extra” comes competition, and also, if you don’t learn the whole night you show everyone how much you learn the rest of the year. Therefore it’s become a whole-night madness.
I’ve personally had issues with this since, for myself, I have stayed up entire nights on at least a couple of Shavuot’s and ended up falling asleep on Shacharis during the reading of the Aseres HaDibros, which in my mind is more important than learning the whole night.
Whatever.
A classic line at weddings are “Oif Simches – We should only meet on Simchas – happy occasions.” I am still baffled at that statement for the following reasons: Sadly, there aren’t that many Simchas to go to, suggesting that…
