העורך Editor

Rabbi Eliyahu of Vilna Was a Real Boy!

I don’t know about you, but it’s hard for me to relate to scholars whose only surviving words are written in the impersonal, judicial or exegetical voice. And if I can’t relate I cannot hope to emulate.

Want to get a sense for the Gaon’s personality? His works have a “distant” tone. The hagiography makes it even worse. What to do? See this excellent post by Rabbi Avi Grossman here. Rabbi Grossman highlights evidence of “humanity” in the personal letter by the Gaon to his family. (His point is different.) Short and sweet.

P.S. A whole book on our heroes could probably be written in this manner. A word to the wise…

On the Stolen Jewish Yemenite Children

The short version from Wikipedia is this:

The Yemenite Children Affair (Hebrew: פרשת ילדי תימן) was the disappearance of hundreds of babies and toddlers of new immigrants to the newly founded state of Israel, mainly from Yemen, between the years 1948 to 1954. Most cases involved the parents being told in the hospital that their newborn children had died although they never received additional reliable information about their fates. The parents claim that their children were really kidnapped and given or sold to Ashkenazi families. In several cases, the children tracked down their parents many years later and conclusively determined their relationship to their Yemenite relations using DNA testing.

It’s in the news at the moment.

Here is a great page compiling many links on the topic.

Courtship Planning For Divorce

An unmarried non-Jewish young lady was overheard saying to a friend, “When I go out with a guy I ask myself if this is the man I want my children to spend every other weekend with”. Can the world become more insane than this?

Excerpted from Orhnet, here (page ten).