by Avrohom Gordimer · May 6, 2021
The headline caught a huge amount of attention: In Israeli first, woman chosen as sole spiritual leader of Orthodox community. The article, and countless other versions of the same, reports that Rabbanit Shira Marili...
by Avi Shafran · May 5, 2021
Between the lines of the terrible description in parshas Bechukosai of what will happen if Klal Yisrael abandons the mitzvos of Hashem lie subtle hints to the limits and end of those curses. The...
by Avi Shafran · May 2, 2021
Hasidim, yeshivas and the truth By AVI SHAFRAN NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |- Opinion MAY 02, 2021 AT 5:00 AM There’s been a full-court press of late against Hasidic education in New York by...
by Avi Shafran · April 26, 2021
A strange and strangely familiar phrase is found in Rashi, commenting on the Torah’s introduction of the account of the mekalel, the blasphemer, with “And he went out” (Vayikra, 24:10) Rashi, quoting Rabi Levi...
by Avi Shafran · April 26, 2021
A piece I wrote about my late father-in-law’s friendship with the celebrated novelist Herman Wouk — whose second yahrtzeit was last Shabbos — appeared in Forward last week. It can be read here.
The headline caught a huge amount of attention: In Israeli first, woman chosen as sole spiritual leader of Orthodox community. The article, and countless other versions of the same, reports that Rabbanit Shira Marili...
Between the lines of the terrible description in parshas Bechukosai of what will happen if Klal Yisrael abandons the mitzvos of Hashem lie subtle hints to the limits and end of those curses. The...
Hasidim, yeshivas and the truth By AVI SHAFRAN NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |- Opinion MAY 02, 2021 AT 5:00 AM There’s been a full-court press of late against Hasidic education in New York by...
A strange and strangely familiar phrase is found in Rashi, commenting on the Torah’s introduction of the account of the mekalel, the blasphemer, with “And he went out” (Vayikra, 24:10) Rashi, quoting Rabi Levi...
A piece I wrote about my late father-in-law’s friendship with the celebrated novelist Herman Wouk — whose second yahrtzeit was last Shabbos — appeared in Forward last week. It can be read here.
For decades, more education was presumed to be the antidote to anti-Semitism. People with more years of education showed less hostility to Jews in survey after survey. Jews and their non-Jewish allies placed their...
My late dear friend Yossie Huttler, a”h, with whom I often studied Daf Yomi on our Staten Island ferry commute, once asked me a question about parshas Acharei Mos. Rashi, he pointed out, cites...
It’s bad enough that the person whose divisive sins caused him to contract tzora’as (a physical condition conferring tum’ah and sometimes mistakenly identified with leprosy) has to sit apart from society, but he is...
Even those of us with limited exposure to farm animals can easily differentiate between a cow and a donkey. Which leads Rashi to explain that when the Torah refers to our need to differentiate...
An essay of mine about what the experiences of two Jews during the Holocaust on Pesach might have to teach us about the present appeared in the Wall Street Journal on erev Shabbos. It...
