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Deborah Fineblum

Deborah Fineblum

Deborah Fineblum is a freelance writer and book author who made aliyah on July 4, 2013.

“We’ve heard about antisemitism around the world but thought there was nothing to worry about here,” says Australian Ronny Krite, who was on the scene on Dec. 14 in the midst of mayhem.
The ninth of Av, which this year starts at sundown on Saturday, Aug. 10, and ends the next night, culminates a three-week period of mourning for devastating losses over the centuries.
“With so many Jews crying out, his complete dedication to reaching each and every one of them is the Rebbe’s greatest legacy,” said Rabbi Yitzchak Schochet of London.
Conservative radio and TV commentator Mark Levin’s “Unfreedom of the Press” has been perched atop “The New York Times” nonfiction bestseller list since its release—an irony of sorts since he’s tackling the Gray Lady’s internal ills.
It comes at a crucial time in American history as the college campuses these youngsters will soon walk onto become increasingly hostile to the Jewish state, and sometimes, even to Jews.
According to researcher David Bryfman, “the study sends a clear message that Jewish engagement doesn’t have to end at bar or bat mitzvah if you provide young people with programming they see as meaningful. If the Jewish youth organizations can provide that, the teens will be there.”
“Even if children don’t get all the complexities, just by feeling the specialness of staying up late, and imagining what it must have been like to stand at that mountain and hear the Ten Commandments all together—that and a piece of cheesecake, and altogether they’ll get a sweet taste of what it means, a new family tradition they won’t forget,” says Meredith Lewis, director of content, education and family experience for PJ Library.
The Shabbat meals he’s arranged over the years while meeting wandering Jews in Jerusalem have given countless young adults their first taste of a traditional Shabbat, and often, an enduring appreciation of Judaism.
Nachal Prat, often referred to by its Arab name, Wadi Kelt, is nothing less than “a hidden gem for its beauty and its sense of the past visible in every stone here.”