The Evil Eleventh
Is child abuse “more common in the Orthodox Jewish community than it is elsewhere? There are no reliable statistics … but there’s reason to believe the answer to that question might be yes.” Those...
Author: Avi Shafran
Autonomy Über Alles
As with a number of evil ideas, physician assisted suicide can be defended without great difficulty. The magic word for making the case is “autonomy”—the right of individuals to make choices about their future...
Political Campaigns… and the Jewish Problem
It might seem a sacrilegious thought but it’s entirely true: Your vote doesn’t count. When was the last time you heard of an election, even for a local office, decided by one vote? A...
Misguided Markings
In slow but clear Hebrew and with an endearingly wry smile, the elderly Jewish lady recalls a trip to America one summer with her sister. At a bank, she recounts, the teller, a young...
We Didn’t Build That
The current extended silly season called a presidential campaign has certainly provided its share of absurdities. Wouldn’t it be nice if all there was to consider were objective facts about the candidates and carefully...
Mrs. Aardvark Comes Home
A time-travelling housefly, transported back to the mid-1980s and spending a Sunday afternoon lazing high on the wall of an ornate living room in a stately home on the fashionable East Side of Providence,...
Hiddur is in the Eye of the Beholder
Olivewood is beautiful. It reminds me of Eretz Yisrael and little carved camels; it has a delicate, calming hue. And silver, well, it is pure and shiny and smooth, and brings sefer Torah ornaments...
Bad Week for the DNC
The Democratic National Committee, at least from the perspective of Israel supporters, had an exceedingly bad week when it convened. Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz was caught in an unpleasant untruth when she claimed...
Missionaries and Maligners
[This is an Ami Magazine “News Commentary” piece — one of several features I write for the publication.] An umbrella group of institutions engaged in Jewish-Christian relations and the Anti-Defamation League both issued statements...
Our Wrong and Rightful Role in the Presidential Election
The noise, news, deception and demagoguery that emanate from political conventions tend to intoxicate some Americans to break out their own flags and flyers and root loudly for their guy (and against the other...
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