Where Less Can Be More
“Can she have a cookie with a Pentagon-K on the box?” the voice on the phone asked and, after receiving my polite but negative response (a Pentagon-K?—now the Defense Department’s in the kashrus business?...
Author: Avi Shafran
Science, Blinded
“Just as ordinary, pig-headed and unreasonable as anybody else” was the eminent twentieth century psychologist H.J. Eysenck’s judgment of scientists. “And their unusually high intelligence,” he added, “only makes their prejudices all the more...
Lucky Loser
Contests aren’t really my thing. I don’t buy lottery tickets or wager on sports (or, for that matter, even know much about them; until recently I thought Miami Heat was, well, a straightforward description,...
Anti-Milah Activist’s Jewish Problem
Two new twists emerged in the West Coast wars against bris milah, or circumcision, recently. The bid to outlaw the practice in the seaside city of Santa Monica, just north of Los Angeles, was...
What America Gets
Many people seemed happy to treat President Obama’s speeches last month on the Middle East and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s before Congress as some sort of sports tournament, rooting and scoring and declaring winners...
Call Me Informant
I snitched on some fellow Jews not long ago. To a government agency yet. It did leave a strange taste, but I think it was the right thing to do. What prompted my unprecedented...
French Connection
The latest marchers in the long parade of horribles anxious to murder in the name of a religion of peace are two feckless young men, Ahmed Ferhani, 26, and Mohamed Mamdouh, 20, natives of...
The Helicopter Left Behind
I think that now, weeks since the mortal remains of this generation’s most reviled mass-murderer were offered to fish and crustaceans, it’s safe to bring up an important Jewish thought that should have occurred...
Agudah Statement on SF Circumcision Ban Measure
May 19, 2011 Statement from Agudath Israel of America concerning the proposed circumcision ban on the ballot in San Francisco That nearly 8000 San Francisco residents were willing to endorse the placing of an...
Letter to the Editor
How heartening that Mahmoud Abbas declares that the State of Palestine that he hopes for will be a “peace-loving nation.” Now his task is to somehow square that with his embrace of Hamas, solemnly...
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