Good evening, and welcome to #ourCOG Daily Brief for December 27, 2025. Stateside, a journalist found his most joyful assignment covering the influence of studying abroad on Black men in Japan, even as U.S. colleges grappled with funding disputes. The Trump administration is intensifying its stance on Venezuela with a blockade against oil tankers, signaling […]

Readings for Shabbat and the Tenth of Tevet  

This
week’s Torah readings provide another example of the Jewish belief that life is
a combination of the bitter and the sweet, sort of like when we dip the bitter
herbs into the sweet charoset at the…

August 27

410: The sacking of Rome by the Visigoths ends after three days. Some
view the Visigoths as just one more group of barbarians that helped to bring an
end to the Roman Empire.  But that is
only part of the story. The Visigoths were Arian…

JUNE 27

1096:
Massacres of the Jews took place in Xanten and Eller (Germany). This was the
second massacre at Xanten in a month. Fifty Jews died. At Eller, five Jewish
community leaders were assigned the task (by the community) of killing all the
memb…