What IS Jerusalem?
Whether one regards President Trump’s declaration that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel as a dangerous and foolhardy move or wise and deeply principled, it cast a well-deserved bucket of cold water into the...
Author: Avi Shafran
Agudath Israel on General Assembly Vote
Agudath Israel Statement on This Morning’s U.N. General Assembly Vote The countries that voted this morning in the United Nations General Assembly to demand that the U.S. rescind its recognition of...
Body and Soul
It sounds like a story about the fictional Chelm. The town philosopher sagely informs his fellow citizens that he has no face. He can’t perceive it directly, he points out, and besides, as anyone...
Agudath Israel Letter to Turkish Consul Condemning Erdogan’s Ugly Words
December 11, 2017 BY REGULAR MAIL & E-MAIL ([email protected]) Honorable Ertan Yalçın Consul General Turkish Consulate General in New York 825 3rd Avenue New York, NY 10022 Dear Mr. Consul General: I write on behalf...
Truth Is Attractive
It wasn’t a phone call the head of the Union for Reform Judaism ever wanted to get. Taglit-Birthright was calling, with bad news. In the U.S., the “Taglit” (“discovery”) part of the name of...
The Reform and Conservative Movements’ Jerusalem Problem
An article of mine about an inconsistency in the heterodox Jewish movements’ attitudes appears on Tablet, and can be read here.
Gezunt or Glucophobia?
Have you been following the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s advice to drink three cups of milk a day, to get enough calcium and vitamin D? No? Good for you. Multiple studies show that there...
Veiter Simchos
My brother, a rebbe in Yeshivas Ner Yisroel’s Mechina high school, and his wife, the daughter of the legendary Menahel Rav Yosef Tendler, z”l,were recently blessed with two new grandsons. Both were named Simcha...
Peter Beinart’s Orthophobia
Below is my original draft of a piece I wrote for Forward. The article as it appeared there, though, was substantially edited, and several sentences that I think are important were omitted. So I...
Of Bump Stocks and Background Checks
The landscape of Devin P. Kelley’s life was a veritable forest of red flags. Mr. Kelley, who last week shot to death 26 worshippers in a Texas church and wounded some 20 others, over...
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