Author: Avi Shafran
Let My Scientists Go
Back on April 13, in the spirit, perhaps, of the Passover then just past, The New York Times editorialized about the need to “free” something from the “chains imposed” upon it. The sentence’s subject...
Amen to Ahavat Yisrael
In a Jerusalem Post opinion piece, Dr. Jonathan Schorsch calls me a “clever fellow” whose “handwringing” over the hatred I’ve encountered aimed at Orthodox Jews is “somewhat posed, if not disingenuous.” Dr. Schorsch can...
Jewish Influence
It isn’t likely that very many people exhaled at long last with relief at the news that three entertainment industry executives had compiled their pet list of “America’s 50 most influential rabbis.” But there...
The Magnificence in the Mundane
With the approach of spring, the synagogue Torah-reading segued from accounts of the seminal events of Jewish peoplehood, the exodus from Egypt and the revelation at Sinai – to a series of social laws,...
Squid Pro Quo
The half-ton squid caught in waters south of New Zealand in February – 33 feet long and weighing 1089 pounds – isn’t kosher, but it can still serve as food for Jewish thought. Such...
The “B” Word
Over the course of his distinguished military career, it is unlikely that General Peter Pace ever encountered a barrage as unrelenting as the one lately lobbed by the media and punditsphere after he expressed...
Blood of Life
That a recent book’s reported claim of Jewish ritual murder in the Middle Ages stirred considerably more commotion in the Jewish media than in the Muslim world may be a hopeful sign. Or it...
A Call To Arms
The thesis that is the Jewish Nation has an antithesis: Amalek. And just as the Jewish People is defined by its Torah, so is its polar opposite associated with a particular system of thought...
Burning Issue — The Revised Version
At Agudath Israel of America, before taking a political or social stance, launching a new effort or offering educational material, we look to our rabbinic leadership for guidance. Although we obviously do not bother...
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