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...
Author: Avi Shafran
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...
Compromising on “Principle”
“Those are my principles!” famously declared Groucho Marx. “And if you don’t like them, well… I have others.” Principles are important, to be sure. But Groucho wasn’t entirely wrong. There are principles… and there...
A Burning Issue
Sybil Sage, a Jewish writer and artist living in New York, asked her son if he minded her plans to have her and his father cremated. “How about I make urns for Dad and...
Hearing Voices
So many tears shed, so many words spoken, so many hearts twisted tight over the weeks, now, since the horrific, confounding, harrowing murder of Leiby Kletzky, a”h. With that distance of days, though— while...
Blasting the Borough Park Shomrim
One of the regular weekly features I write for Ami Magazine is a “News and Analysis” piece. Although I don’t usually post those offerings here on Cross-Currents (and even though Marvin Schick posted a...
The Heavens Are the L-rd’s
Those of us old enough to remember July 20, 1969—when human beings first walked on the moon—recall, too, our sense of amazement over the “one small step for man” that came to mark the...
Agudath Israel statement on reporting suspicions of child abuse
Agudath Israel of America has received several inquiries in the wake of misleading claims that have recently been made about our stance on reporting suspected child abusers to law enforcement authorities. We take the...
Handwriting Analysis: Science or Snow Job?
As a boy growing up in the 1960s, I became intrigued with handwriting analysis. It’s an intriguing notion, an almost obvious one: our character traits are subtly expressed in our handwriting. Every person is...
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