Yaakov Paley

They seem just as human as the others. They bleed when cut, and the blood is always red. A gentile could eat cholent and a Jew could own a baseball team. Are they one species or two?

It contains no oil or honey, nuts or fruit, not even a coating of egg and poppy seeds . . . How did this “bread of poverty” wangle center stage in the festival celebrating our acquisition of the greatest of wealths—our freedom?

For what is man/ But a frame/ Of living wood/ With a bark of flesh/ Whose spent years/ Are carefully recorded/ In the rings of his soul/ To be counted and measured/ When his tree is felled--?

When something consistently reoccurs in our world--a particular weather pattern, a bottle-nosed dolphin migrating habit, a quirk of human behavior--we call it "nature." Apparently, the Jews-in-the-news phenomenon is a force of nature...

A nation held its breath as, week after week, the enemy sent steel ravens to claw at their skies, pieces of airplane hurtling earthwards together with the bombs. They had no choice but to win, and they did...

"Taking a human life is an absolute no-no. How could Abraham have been willing to kill his own son in cold blood? So what if G-d commanded him--that's no excuse!"

As they disappear beneath the waves, we wonder whether our efforts are futile. Ten bags, twenty bags, thirty bags... It hasn't worked so far, so what's the point of continuing?

They called the wonder-food "despicable." They claimed they could not stomach its "unnaturalness," that their bodies could not contain the miracle gift within its boundaries...

Just as the sun had sighed its last rays, the king and his guards sighted a small bright cottage, whose light bravely defied the dusk of an already darkened valley...

The cause is the mountain itself: it simply and stubbornly gets in the way. The wind hits it with force, and must force its way around or over. As it does so, it carries little pieces of the mountain with it