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...
Author: Avi Shafran
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...
What’s New
As someone with a well-honed sense of wonder, who delights at the sight of a blue jay (even though several of them regularly greet my wife and me outside the window during autumn breakfasts)...
Times Are Strange
A lengthy op-ed in the New York Times today by one Susan Katz Miller celebrates intermarriage and the raising of children of intermarrieds in both Jewish and non-Jewish traditions. Her family “celebrates Yom Kippur,...
Orthodoxy and Honesty
The essay below was written for, and published by, Haaretz.com. I offer it here with that paper’s permission — and with my apologies to readers who may feel that enough has been written about...
In Our Bones
We cannot see the tens of thousands of mazikin, or “harmers” (often translated as “demons”), that the Talmud teaches surround us always (Berachos 6a). Were they visible, says Abba Binyamin, they would utterly terrify...
The Import of Empathy
The other day, waiting to board a bus, I was moved to think about empathy. Unfortunately, the prod came in the form of the opposite, crass selfishness. A young woman approached the group of...
Open “Orthodoxy”?
A rejoinder to my recent essay on Yeshivat Chovevei Torah and “Open Orthodoxy” was published here . Below is my response to that posting, written in my capacity as Agudath Israel of America’s spokesperson....
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