What Were They Thinking?
The Jewish Telegraphic Agency, whose dispatches are widely reproduced both here in the United States and abroad, reported today on British Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis having become the first sitting British chief rabbi to...
Author: Avi Shafran
The Fact of the Matter
Several weeks ago, my wife and I had the pleasure of visiting Detroit (well, Oak Park, a suburb, and a solvent one), where two of our daughters and their husbands and their children live....
Too Little Information
At the Sheva Brachos festivities this past summer for the marriage of our youngest daughter, my wife and I heard many wonderful things about our newest son-in-law. Friends and relatives spoke about his impressive...
The Peril of Pluralism
The essay below appeared under a different title in Haaretz earlier this week. I share it here with that paper’s permission. Those of us who believe that the Torah, both its written text and...
Deathless
Odd that the Torah-portion about the death of Yaakov Avinu is called “Vayechi.” After all, the word means “And he lived.” And, differently voweled, the word can mean “And he will live.” And especially...
Seeing Privilege As A Pain
Sometimes a first-person account is just so sad you could cry. And when the writer seems oblivious to the sadness, well, then it’s sadder still. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency recently offered a piece written...
In Those Days, In This Time
The following essay was written for Haaretz and appeared on its website recently under a different title. I share it here with that paper’s permission. There’s a striking irony in the fact that Chanukah...
Seeding the Right Cloud
Following the time-honored if somewhat irritating tradition of speechmakers who begin by announcing that they are departing from the scheduled topic, I informed those present that instead of focusing on the media’s coverage of...
Alan Dershowitz to the Rescue
Celebrated attorney Alan Dershowitz has petitioned Israeli President Shimon Peres to intervene in what Haaretz characterizes as “the case of the apparent blacklisting of Rabbi Avi Weiss by Israel’s Chief Rabbinate.” That is to...
The Way We Are
While those of us here south of the border (the Canadian one, that is) were focused on our own local elections, a Chassidic woman candidate in a Montreal borough was busy making history. Mindy...
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