Rabbi Eliyahu Kohen

Sometimes we can search high and low for cutting-edge topics to engage our current students and attract newcomers. Thanks to Disney+, a new animated movie has arrived that will keep us teaching non-stop through Pesach and beyond. The NY Times movie reviewer A.O. Scott pinpoints the draw of Disney’s latest release, Soul: “In about 100... Read more »

The actors Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn, “partners” in real life for over 35 years, are starring as Mr. and Mrs. Claus in an upcoming Netflix holiday movie. The New York Times thought this was an auspicious moment for the couple, who rarely star together, to be interviewed. As the conversation progressed, the Times asked... Read more »

Please see this picture in the New York Times before continuing. A train that went careening over the end of elevated tracks in the Netherlands on Monday was left teetering about 30 feet above the ground. But no one was injured or killed in the accident — thanks to a sculpture of a whale’s tail... Read more »

by Rabbi Eliyahu Kohen | November 5, 2020 The popular writer Jennifer Weiner describes her own Jewish identity in the context of exploring the Jewishness of former Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg (R.B.G.) in the NYTimes on September 29, 2020. Weiner sets the tone for the essay, The Very Jewish R.B.G., with a keen observation by her then five-year-old... Read more »

With summer upon us, wouldn’t it be a great opportunity to jump start a Zoom gemara class or chavrusas? Learning gemara is the perfect antidote to the Covid 19 restrictions by opening your students’ horizons and transporting them to a new frontier. Your students will be intrigued by the depth, sophistication and logic of Talmudic analysis.

Uri Friedman, managing editor at the Atlantic Council, is confronted by “life’s biggest questions” amidst the turbulence of Covid 19 by his five-year-old son, and is hard-pressed for answers. Writing in The Atlantic’s August 2020 edition, Friedman presents his and his wife’s struggle with their Covid-induced home schooling. After weeks of coming to grips with... Read more »

COVID-19 has turned our world upside down. The transformation has been compared to throwbacks to the Great Depression and World War II. How do we view such cataclysmic events

Three years after Bernie Madoff’s startling $10-20 billion Ponzi fraud case was concluded, a lower profile but equally damaging Ponzi scheme engineered by Texas businessman, Allen Stanford, was adjudicated in June 2012:

As anti-racial protests resurged in Portland, Seattle and cities nationwide, scores of iconic statues, including those of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson have been torn down. The Washington Post’s Annie Gowen’s July 8 headline declared, As Statues of Founding Fathers Topple, Debate Rages Over Where Protesters Should Draw the Line. Gowen writes, Manisha Sinha, a... Read more »

Rabbi Yissocher Frand (On the Parsha 3) shares an eye-opening Midrash from Talmudic times of a Jewish farmer (who we’ll call Reuven) who ran into financial difficulties and was forced to sell his trusted plowing cow. The farmer sold the cow to a non-Jewish farmer (who we’ll call Logan) who was delighted as his newly purchased

Pages By: Rabbi Eliyahu Kohen

If Pixar’s New Film — Soul — Only Knew About Judaism’s “Great Before”

Mrs. Santa’s Hanukkah Menorah

A Whale Tale

Jennifer Weiner, Disney World & R.B.G.

New Tools to Learn Gemara with Your Students During COVID-19

Can Uri Friedman Answer His Son’s Big Questions?

Is Life Just a Roll of the Dice, A Play of the Cards? New Olami Discussion Guide for the Yomim Noraim

“I’m Not a Thief”…Or Am I?

The Declaration That No One Can Cancel

Rabbi Frand’s Kiruv Lesson from a Holy Cow

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