Torah Heroes

Presents biographies of famous Jewish men and women who have shown a commitment to upholding Jewish values. Includes activities for performing mitzvot.

Does the Torah require Jews to live in Israel? Does the Torah require even yeshiva students to serve in the Israeli army?

“I can’t wait to share 10 Hidden Heroes with the kids in my life!” –Jennifer Garner, actress and producer 10 Hidden Heroes helps children develop counting skills while learning ways to make the world a better place. In this fun-filled and inspiring seek-and-find book, New York Times bestselling author and president of Save the Children Action Network, Mark K. Shriver highlights the various ways children and adults can be real-life heroes in their everyday lives. Little ones learn to count the individual heroes who shine a light on the importance of helping others whether it’s through teaching, caring for animals, protecting the environment, or keeping others from harm. Adults who read along can help their children make connections to the unseen acts of compassion that occur in their very own neighborhoods. Illustrated with colorful drawings by Laura Watson, 10 Hidden Heroes proves that acts of kindness and generosity can be found all around us. We just need to know where to look. Join the search!

Help students increase their connection to Jewish knowledge and values through journal writing exercises.

Tomas Sedlacek has shaken the study of economics as few ever have. Named one of the "Young Guns" and one of the "five hot minds in economics" by the Yale Economic Review, he serves on the National Economic Council in Prague, where his provocative writing has achieved bestseller status. How has he done it? By arguing a simple, almost heretical proposition: economics is ultimately about good and evil. In The Economics of Good and Evil, Sedlacek radically rethinks his field, challenging our assumptions about the world. Economics is touted as a science, a value-free mathematical inquiry, he writes, but it's actually a cultural phenomenon, a product of our civilization. It began within philosophy--Adam Smith himself not only wrote The Wealth of Nations, but also The Theory of Moral Sentiments--and economics, as Sedlacek shows, is woven out of history, myth, religion, and ethics. "Even the most sophisticated mathematical model," Sedlacek writes, "is, de facto, a story, a parable, our effort to (rationally) grasp the world around us." Economics not only describes the world, but establishes normative standards, identifying ideal conditions. Science, he claims, is a system of beliefs to which we are committed. To grasp the beliefs underlying economics, he breaks out of the field's confines with a tour de force exploration of economic thinking, broadly defined, over the millennia. He ranges from the epic of Gilgamesh and the Old Testament to the emergence of Christianity, from Descartes and Adam Smith to the consumerism in Fight Club. Throughout, he asks searching meta-economic questions: What is the meaning and the point of economics? Can we do ethically all that we can do technically? Does it pay to be good? Placing the wisdom of philosophers and poets over strict mathematical models of human behavior, Sedlacek's groundbreaking work promises to change the way we calculate economic value.

The internal tensions and conflicts central to Haredi Lithuanian yeshivas in contemporary Israel are described with a focus on the rabinical authorities' attempts to respond to these difficulties and the changes the Haredi community is experiencing as a result