Long before Ariel Horowitz, now 21, graduated from high school he knew he wanted to serve in the Israeli army and study Torah. So Horowitz began looking into hesder yeshivas – post-high school programs that enable religious students to serve their country and, when they’re not in the army, to engage in full-time Torah study.
“A people is not reborn in a single day,” remarked a young Rahel Yanait Ben-Zvi with determining sobriety. The idealistic, 23-year old woman who had arrived in the Land of Israel barely a year earlier in 1908 could have been speaking about her own astonishing life and career which would unfold over the course of the next seven decades. She was a member of Israel’s founding generation, a collection of brave and visionary men and women who connected their moral beliefs to political action. Because of the profound sense of purpose, she found in the cause of Jewish national revival, Rahel Ben-Zvi realized her own potential and helped countless young women (and young men) realize theirs.
he Seder night is a time of order, the word seder means order, and on this night everything is ordered. We begin the night with the declaration of the stages of the meal, kadesh, urchatz, karpas, yachatz, etc., the focus being that each step has its own name and its own moment. Why is this night so regimented? Why so structured? Why didn’t our law allow for more subjective choice, why not give principles and allow for each of us to apply them differently?
