By Rabbi Ari Ballaban Temple Beth Or In the realm of halacha (Jewish law) and morality, there are those who compare the act of accepting refugees to the mitzvah of redeeming captives — pidyon sh’vuyim. In contrast to the aphorism that “one shouldn’t negotiate with kidnappers,” halacha actually requires (in

By Rabbi Ari Ballaban, Temple Beth Or Like many Jews, I have a little bit of family in Israel. The Israeli side of my family (cousins, aunts and uncles) moved there in the wake of the Holocaust, around the same time that the rest of my family who survived the