Questions Aren’t Fatal
When, as a teenager, I first read about the Code of Hammurabi, the ancient set of social laws dating from the time of our forefather Avraham, I was greatly troubled. Elements of the code,...
Author: Avi Shafran
The Sound of Silence
The latest hope for signs of possible life on other planets lies in the cargo bay of a spacecraft that blasted off from Cape Canaveral the morning of Shabbos parshas Toldos. The Mars Science...
Annoyance and Opportunity
The mosquitoes are gone, thank G-d. Not only the determined one who pestered me one summer morning in shul during davening, but all of her friends and relatives too. Gone for the fall, winter...
Is Anybody There?
Remember Terri Schiavo, the “vegetative” Florida woman who, as a result of her husband’s insistence and a court order (over her parents’ objections), was removed from life support and died in 2005? “Vegetative” patients—people...
Running, Racism and Resentment
When I recounted seeing a small group of unusually dressed men in shul last Sunday in Staten Island and realizing that they were trying to catch a minyan before participating in the New York...
Exercising the Empathy Muscle
Politicians are often subject to derision, often for good reason. Recently, though, a Catholic cleric hurled an unusual and creative insult at local politicos: They are like Jews. Edward Gilbert, the leader of the...
Beware of Orthodoxy!
The latest Nobel Prize for chemistry was awarded last month to Israeli scientist Daniel Shechtman for his discovery of “quasicrystals.” In the 1980s, the Israeli chemist noticed something peculiar as he examined a glowing...
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...
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,...
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