by Rabbi Yisrael Rutman In the midst of the Six Day War in June 1967, after Israeli forces defeated the Egyptians, the option to conquer the Old City of Jerusalem presented itself. The initial military plan was aimed exclusively at removing the threat to Israel’s survival from Nasser’s Egypt, which had blockaded the Straits of
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by Rabbi Yisrael Rutman

In some Jewish communities in Algeria and Galitzia there was once a custom to blow shofar at the end of the fast of Tisha B’Av (the Ninth of Av). We are familiar only with the shofar blown on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur but not on Tisha B’av.

A custom, by definition, is not something written in the Torah or handed down by the sages of the Talmud, but rather something that emerged from Jewish experience in various times and places.