Recidivist Repentance
It’s easy to feel disheartened, even despondent, as Rosh Hashanah approaches, at the realization that some of the things we did teshuvah for last year are things we need to repent for again this...
Author: Avi Shafran
Kashering Elephants and Donkeys
I appreciate that my friend of many years Rabbi Menken agrees with me that treating political affiliations like sports teams is wrong, as is attaching ourselves to political positions (or parties, as I wrote...
The President’s Rosh Hashana Conference Call
A piece I wrote for the Forward today about the conference call the White House has set up with a number of American rabbis, can be read here.
Statues of Limitation
It’s safe to say that many of us are less than exercised over the public debate about Confederate-era statues on public lands. It may animate those with a dog in the race, so to...
The Peril of Partisanship
Among contemporary American life’s many negative influences on Torah-conscious Jews is a subtle one that is generally overlooked. We don’t need reminders of the pernicious impact of the surrounding society’s denial of eternal truths,...
Death of a Slogan
“Le roi est mort, vive le roi!” That’s the famous French declaration that was traditionally made when a monarch had breathed his last: “The king is dead. Long live the king!” Recent days have...
Name Game
A stylistically different but similar piece to a recent Hamodia one about “Open Orthodoxy”‘s dropping of that self-description, written for the Forward’s readership, can be read here.
The Bond of Shared Targethood
A rumination on black-Jewish relations, born of the recent Charlottesville rally, can be read here.
True Jews
You may know something about the Sicarii, or Sikari’im (or Sikrikim), the radical Jewish faction at the time of the destruction of the Second Beis Hamikdash. What you may not know is that their...
“Blood of the Right Sort”
During Germany’s accursed Third Reich, the U.S. immigration system severely limited the number of German Jews admitted to the country to about 26,000 annually. But even that quota was less than a quarter filled...
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