Author: Avi Shafran

Much of our Seder-night message to our children, mediated by the Haggadah, is forthright and clear. Some of it, though, is subtle and stealthy. Dayeinu, for example. On the surface, it is a simple...

The media’s fascination with Orthodox Jews seems to only intensify with time. Some of us Orthodox may be discomfited by reports that television and motion pictures have come to increasingly offer up observant Jewish...

Some outsiders regard the Orthodox Jewish world as monolithic, but those of us within the community know well that quite the opposite is the case. Few religious communities are as diverse. The Orthodox universe...

The “steamroller,” we all know, was steamrolled. Although those whom Eliot Spitzer focused on flattening were New York State wrongdoers, he ended up being mangled by misdeeds of his own. And thereby became an...

With time, those with open eyes come to recognize that life is peppered with strange, small ironies – “coincidences” that others don’t even notice, or unthinkingly dismiss. The famous psychiatrist Carl Jung puzzled over...

Asked by The New York Times in 2005 what today-taken-for-granted idea or value he thinks may disappear in the next 35 years, Professor Peter Singer, the Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University’s Center for...

Vindication is nice, but there’s sometimes bitter mixed in with the sweet. Back in October of last year, a headline in the New York Jewish Week read: “No Religious Haven From Abuse.” The subheader...

There are three distinct ways to look at school vouchers. One is to regard them as a bogeyman threatening to destroy the American public educational system and undermine the sublime values that system instills...

Alighting from the Staten Island ferry at Manhattan’s southern tip on my way to work February 5, I was greeted by a phalanx of stern-looking police, padded with Kevlar and armed with assault rifles....