A Modern-Day Patriarch
The first notice, shortly before Rosh Hashana, came from “Tehilla.” The subject box of the e-mail read: “Baruch Dayan HaEmet/URGENT, YOSEF PASSED AWAY!” and the message began: “I can’t believe this rabbi. I can’t...
Author: Avi Shafran
I ♥ THE U.N.
I love the United Nations. Yes, I know, the General Assembly was well and memorably described by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu as a “theater of the absurd.” Actually, a better metaphor might be a...
A Jewish Guide to Time Travel
Rabbi Shlomo Ephraim Luntschitz, the brilliantly insightful 16th century author of the Torah commentary Kli Yakar, comments on the fact that the word the Torah uses for the sun and moon—“me’oros,” or “luminaries,” (Beraishis,...
Send Obama a Message
The Obama administration considers Israel a sponsor of terror —at least according to Dick Morris, the disgraced ex-advisor to Bill Clinton, and a host of self-styled “conservative” media. The news was shocking—well, maybe not...
Crimes of Communication
“Funny, she doesn’t look Jewish” was the intriguing opening sentence of a recent story in the New York Post about presidential candidate Rep. Michelle Bachmann. The report asserted that former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney,...
G-d Positioning System
I rode the brake and we descended the single-lane dirt path slowly, feeling the vibration of pebbles under our tires turn into the audible crunch of good-sized stones. My wife and I had embarked...
Beware the Bear Market
“You lost,” my 18-year-old son somberly informed me in shul the other day, and we both laughed. Davening had just ended. I recite Kaddish these days at the end of each service in the...
Passports, Provisos and Photo Captions
When you stop to think about it, the fact that so much of the world’s attention—not to mention so much jealousy, anger and irrationality—has for so many years been so keenly focused on so...
The “O”-Word
The recent suggestion by the rabbi of a West Coast Orthodox congregation that one of the birchos hashachar (morning blessings) recited each day by Torah-observant Jews be eliminated—he sees it as insufficiently enlightened—is a...
Anti-Orthodox? What Anti-Orthodox?
Below is the “News and Analysis” feature from last week’s Ami Magazine, republished here with permission. Anti-Orthodox? What Anti-Orthodox? In the most recent edition of the New York Jewish Week, the paper’s editor and...
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