The indelible impression of his grandfathers' diligence that the Ohr HaChaim observed and which was part of his youth never left him. Their regular schedule was a full day of learning, after which they would rest a little, never oversleeping the midnight hour. At chatzos they would be up, to sit and mourn the destruction of the Beis Hamikdosh. After this, their learning resumed, continuing unabated through the following day.

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Antisemitism is Unstoppable by Mordecai Plaut The world is sliding down a slippery slope greased by the yetzer hora. Fifty years ago, it seemed that the West, and especially the United States, was a society that was fairly moral in the specific sense that it upheld the Seven Laws of Noach. The largely Protestant country was free of avoda zora, there was a very developed legal system that enforced laws against murder in all its forms, 80 percent of all households were headed by a married couple, and all public, acceptable behavior upheld reasonable moral principles. People were not perfect but public standards were high and they were not under constant assault.

Opinion and Comment Our Torah, Our Prayers And Our Tears: Our Torah by HaRav Chaim Pinchos Scheinberg Part I The sefer Kuzari teaches us that there are four basic groups of entities in the world; inanimate objects, plant- life, animal-life, and verbal/thinking human beings (domeim, tzomei'ach, chai, medaber -- mineral, vegetable, animal and human). From the most basic to the more advanced, these four classes make up the world. Each group has specific qualities, which are so significantly different from the previous level that each group has a completely different realm of experience. The Hashgochoh protis of each group is infinitely greater than the previous group in the hierarchy. Therefore, the specialized existence that it experiences is entirely different from the others.

The Jews of Libya by C. Ofek PART I The Jews of Libya were never a large community, numbering no more than 38,000 at its largest, just before almost 90 percent left for Eretz Yisroel before Libya attained independence in January, 1952. Yet it is an ancient community and there is evidence of Jewish settlement there dating to the time of the Second Beis Hamikdash.

Tarnished Gold: Rabbi Yaakov Yosef in the Land of Opportunity by R. Hofner At the end of the 19th century, hundreds of thousands of Jews fleeing the horrors and pogroms of Czarist Russia streamed toward the shores of what came to be known as the Goldene Medinoh. Every month thousands of Jews were added to New York's population until at the beginning of the 20th century Jews comprised more than one-fourth of the city's total residents.