On June 8, 1967, during the Six-Day War, IDF Chief Rabbi Shlomo Goren entered the Cave of Machpelah in Hebron, sounded the shofar and opened a Torah scroll. After 19 years in which Jews had been barred from the site by the Jordanian occupation, he read the passage from this week's Parsha describing Avraham's purchase of the very place where he stood.

Why did he choose the account of a burial plot to mark the Jewish return to one of our holiest sites?

The answer begins much earlier in Avraham's life.

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Five new candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America won House seats Tuesday. Together with reelected Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., that brings the number of DSA-backed members in the next House of Representatives as of this writing to at least seven.

This marks a significant expansion for a movement whose official program calls for abolishing the Senate, bringing the nation's largest corporations under public ownership, and replacing the president and Supreme Court with institutions subordinate to Congress.

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It was Nov. 1, 1946, and Ossie Schectman of the New York Knicks took a bounce pass and scored on a two-handed underhand layup. Schectman, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants, had just scored the first basket in NBA history.

The Knicks won that night at the Maple Leaf Gardens arena, defeating the Toronto Huskies 68-66. More than 7,000 spectators were there for the inaugural game of the Basketball Association of America. The league became the National Basketball Association three years later.

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What does the Akeidah, the binding of Yitzchak, have to do with Gaza?

At first glance, very little. The Akeidah is generally understood as the ultimate test of Avraham's faith, demonstrating his willingness to obey Hashem even when commanded to sacrifice his beloved son.

Yet two medieval Torah commentators, the Rashbam and the Chizkuni, link the Akeidah to what we would today call a "Land for Peace" deal between Avraham and Avimelech, king of the Philistines.

The Akeidah opens with the words, "And it came to pass after these things that G-d tested Avraham" (Genesis 22:1).

What were "these things"?

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On December 29, 1778, as British troops overran Savannah, Georgia, a 43-year-old Jewish officer and his teenage son tried desperately to escape across Musgrove Creek.

British soldiers were firing at them, and the creek was swollen by the incoming tide. The officer could have swum to safety, but his 16-year-old son could not swim. Rather than abandon him, he surrendered alongside the boy.

The officer was Colonel Mordecai Sheftall, the highest-ranking Jew to serve on the American side during the Revolutionary War.

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