By Rabbi Dr. Bernhard H. Rosenberg       In the Haggadah it states, " It is our duty to thank and to praise in song and prayer, to glorify and extol Him who performed all these wonders for our forefathers and for us. "  I, as a son of survivors thank God for allowing my parents to survive and giving me the opportunity to study and become a Rabbi."             I personally feel no guilt for having the God-given privilege of being alive.  I...

By Jonathan Mark The Soviet Jewry movement began right here at Columbia, explained Rabbi Sheer, with the first meeting of the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, in April 1964. Four days later, SSSJ (popularly known as "Triple-S-J") held its first demonstration outside the Soviet mission to the United Nations. Of course, a great escape of this magnitude needed many masterminds and accomplices, but in 1964, explained Rabbi Sheer to his students, there was a man named Yaakov (Jacob) Birnbaum, and so...

Our First Passover By Natalia Nikova It was April 1980. My mother, my teenage daughter, and I were flying from Rome to New York City. Our journey started two months earlier in Leningrad, where after a long waiting period we were allowed to emigrate. We stayed a week in Vienna and a month and a half in Rome. Our documents were thoroughly checked, fingerprints were taken, and finally we got permission to settle in the United States. Looking out the window...

American Jews come in all different skin colors, socioeconomic backgrounds, ethnicities, cultures, and ways of practicing Judaism and being Jewish. Regardless of color or country, Jews have been oppressed and discriminated against throughout history. That history of oppression and exclusion, some of it very recent, is embedded in our culture and our hearts. But our story is also complicated, a winding tale of oppression and freedom, of struggle and triumph. How we respond to that story is critical. Rather than isolating...