My White House Chanukah
If you should ever happen to find yourself in an ornate, high-ceilinged room and a military-uniformed classical string ensemble is segueing from a flawless rendition of a Bach Concerto to an equally impressive (if...
Author: Avi Shafran
Family Affair
The speaker was a bit reluctant, unaccustomed to standing before an audience. Yet there she stood in Los Angeles, her hometown, at a dinner hosted by a Southern California Jewish campus outreach organization, the...
Winter Harvest
In a forthcoming book, “Final Exam: A Surgeon’s Reflections on Mortality,” Dr. Pauline W. Chen writes about the many operations she performed on brain-dead patients for the purpose of procuring, or “harvesting,” their organs...
Partial-Birth Distortion
Listening to critics of the Partial-Birth Abortion Act of 2003, one might conclude that the law, which was ruled unconstitutional by several courts whose rulings are now under appeal before the United States Supreme...
Parades and Principles
In the end, it wasn’t threatened violence from any haredi hotheads that did in the planned “gay pride” parade scheduled for the streets of Jerusalem, but an IDF strike in Gaza that brought about...
Classified Information
Part of my job as Agudath Israel of America’s media liaison is to help ensure that traditional Orthodox Jewish beliefs and life are accurately represented in the press, and that the larger Jewish and...
Anger of the Atheists
Responses to an essay say much to a writer. Sometimes they reveal flaws in the essayist’s assumptions or reasoning, provide a different perspective or are otherwise enlightening. Other times they reveal something more about...
Jiminy Cricket and the Jews
Anyone familiar with contemporary talk-radio knows that the word “liberal” has become for some a slur, implying that holders of ideals like tolerance for other cultures or concern for the poor and disadvantaged are...
Unclaimed Baggage
In early August, the New York Sun published an editorial about the apparent anti-Israel bias of the group Human Rights Watch (HRW). Among other things, the group’s executive director, Kenneth Roth, accused the Jewish...
A “Prophecy” Sadly Fulfilled
Mindful of the Talmudic teaching that after the destruction of the First Holy Temple the only semblance of prophecy resides in children and fools, and well aware of my age, I should hesitate before...
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