The knock on the front door brought my husband back to the present moment. The crazy look in his eyes faded. He released his hand from my throat and holstered the gun he had been pressing against my forehead.

He warned me that if I called the police, he’d make sure I didn't live to testify against him and abruptly left the bedroom of the house we shared together with our two young children. I fell to my knees, gasping for air.

Catherine Perez-Shakdam’s life reads like One Thousand and One Nights. Her biographical stories include a paternal grandfather incarcerated in a Nazi concentration camp in Tunisia, a maternal grandfather who sought to escape Hitler by converting to Christianity and fighting in the French resistance, four years living as a Sunni Muslim wife in Yemen, escorting the future President of Iran on the campaign trail, and other tales more intricately woven than a deftly designed Persian carpet.

In 2018, after an event at her synagogue, Yana was crossing the street to get to her car, and she was hit by an oncoming vehicle that threw her into the air. Within a split second, she landed on top of the oncoming car, shattering the windshield with her head. When one of the synagogue members came out and saw what had happened, emergency responders were immediately called to the scene. Yana was in critical condition, intubated, and taken to the Lankenau Hospital trauma unit.

As I opened the door, my eyes zoomed in on my husband’s coat and shoes, remaining in the same spot as when I left that morning. The thought weighed on me like a ton of bricks. “It’s happening again.” “How long would this depression last?” The never-ending days of anxiety made leaving the house too hard.

Three months after the war began, Rabbi Moshe Moscowitz drove fifteen hours back to his Kharkiv community and synagogue

An ancient Jewish community that survived all odds and came home.

Pres. Zelensky joins a long list of amazing Ukrainian Jews who have made the world a better place.

The people of Mariupol understood they were living on a powder keg. On the Ukraine side of the makeshift border with the separatist Donetsk People’s Republic, Mariupol has been a flashpoint since 2014. That’s why, when Russia invaded Ukraine six weeks ago, Mariupolites thought they were better prepared than most. They thought they knew what to expect. Tragically, they were wrong.

Mega-seders and home deliveries require many tons of shmurah matzah, wine and other staples

“If not for you, I would be dead,” were her first words to me after I told her who was calling. It had been more than 40 years since the last time we spoke.