Living in Israel
Why Did We Leave Los Angeles to Move to Israel?
Rabbi Joel Zeff
" . . . I was, as Bruce Springsteen intones, "born in the USA". My mother immigrated to America as a baby and my father was born in the United States to immigrant parents. I am a Yankee. Yet, as much as I appreciate the social and political uniqueness of America and as much as I love its breath-taking natural beauty, for me there is something missing. . . . ."

History
Thinking About the Land of Israel . . .
Rabbi Yisroel of Shklov and the Paas Hashulchan
Rabbi Binyomin Adilman
" . . . As he lay racked in pain on an abandoned rooftop, with his young daughter in his arms, he began, one final time, to beseech Hashem for his life and for the merit of establishing a family on the soil of the Holy Land. Then he made a vow to Hashem. . . ."

Hashkafa
Can a Country be Born in a Day?
Sermon by British Chief Rabbi Professor Jonathan Sacks
Contributed by Darche Noam/Shapell's alumnus Andrew White

" . . . Isaiah foresaw that the return to Zion would be difficult. Israel would face enemies from without and divisions from within. And at that moment Isaiah turns to his people and gives them comfort. 'Can a country be born in a day? Or a nation be brought forth in a moment?' The return to Zion, he says, will be like no other event in history. . . . ."

Halakha
Practical Agricultural Halakha in Modern Israel:
Feeding the Animals in the Zoo
R. Eliezer Kwass

"Implementing agricultural halakha in modern day Israel has presented some knotty problems, and the poskim have worked out some creative solutions. . . ."