Author: Avi Shafran

Suprising… and Not So Much

After a hail of French police gunfire relieved humanity of the noxious presence of Mohamed Merah, the 23-year-old Algerian-Frenchman who murdered seven people, including three children, in cold blood and declared himself ready to...

The Pesach Plan

The group of Novardhoker yeshiva bochurim and their rebbe (and his rebbetzin)—along with a number of families—were packed into the train’s stock cars in the summer of 1941. Since Rav Yehudah Leib Nekritz, zt”l,...

Seizing the Lull

A memory from when I was a teen remains vivid. A middle-aged fellow had come to shul one Thursday morning because he had yahrtzeit. The shul hosted a mixture of Jews, some “frum from...

Strafing or Sanctions?

There isn’t a sane person on the planet—at least if evil counts as insanity—who doesn’t wish for Iran to be forced to abandon its nuclear ambitions (or to have them vaporized by one or...

Agudath Israel Statement on Toulouse Attack

The murderous attack on the Ozar Hatorah school in Toulouse, France this morning is a tragedy that rightly tears the hearts of Jews and people of good will everywhere. More than a tragedy, though,...

Meat and Murder

I have an abiding appreciation of animals. My family has shared living space at one point or another over the years with: a small goat, a large iguana, a beautiful tarantula, an assortment of...

The Gorilla’s Lesson

The little boy was petrified, as one might imagine, by the gorilla who sat down next to him at the table in his (the child’s) home. I hadn’t meant to scare the kid; I...

The Times, It Ain’t A-Changing

I can’t pride myself on having a good long-term memory (as my wife can attest, that’s an understatement), but a February 1 New York Times article did spur my sluggish hippocampus. The Times article...

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Give Gays a Chance

(A slightly edited version of this article appears, under a different title, in the February 24 issue of the Forward) The recent mini-drama of Rabbi Aryeh Ralbag’s suspension as chief rabbi of his native...

Confessions of a Giants Fan

I’m tapping this out in my office at Agudath Israel of America’s national headquarters in Manhattan to the tune, so to speak, of blaring horns, booming drums, and the wild shouting of hundreds of...

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