On Location
I spent most of this past week at the annual conference of the American Jewish Press Association, which convened this year in Washington, D.C. I always enjoy the yearly gathering of writers and editors...
Author: Avi Shafran
The Missing Ethic
A reader asks why I haven’t seen fit to address ethical concerns raised by news reports about a kosher slaughterhouse/meatpacking concern in Postville, Iowa that was the subject of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement...
The Road Taken
As summer unfolds, we behold and endure graduation ceremonies – the recognition of academic milestones, the bestowing of diplomas, the conferring of awards and the delivery, to excess, of commencement addresses. Having had the...
From The Mouths of Ministers
“Tonight I humbly ask forgiveness of the Jewish people for every act of anti-Semitism and the deafening silence of Christianity in your greatest hour of need during the Holocaust.” Those words were spoken before...
What Would Hillel Say?
Once upon a time, Jews who found Judaism cumbersome simply declared the Torah obsolete and went about their lives as they pleased. They weren’t inclined to intellectual contortions. Some “progressive” Jews today, though, choose...
Baby Einstein
An amusing pair of letters to the editor appeared in the New York Times Book Review on April 13, responding to a review of a book about the science of human reproduction. Both letters...
The Egalitarianism Has Landed
My computer cautions me against fooling with certain manufacturer-determined system settings. Doing so, it warns, could create serious problems. Riskier still is messing around with Judaism’s system-settings, determined by the ultimate Manufacturer. That lesson...
Jewish Wealths
Stephen Schwarzman is a very wealthy man. And a very generous one. The CEO and co-founder of The Blackstone Group, a New York investment bank, recently made the largest unrestricted gift to any New...
The Wright Stuff
Even before Senator Barack Obama unequivocally denounced Reverend Jeremiah Wright as the loon he is, I was willing to take the senator’s word for the fact that his erstwhile pastor’s rantings about America, the...
The Four Answers
It is not only the Torah’s words that hold multiple layers of meaning. So do those of the Talmudic and Midrashic Sages – even the words of the prayers and rituals they formulated. Such...
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