Rav Aharon Lichtenstein & the Haredim
“I am very partial to Rav Lichtenstein’s approach,” said the Lelov hassid to me at the funeral of Rav Aharon Lichtenstein z”l a month ago. “Rav Lichtenstein deals with abstractions, in addition to focusing...
Author: Shira Schmidt
Who is normal?
How do you say “motherhood and apple pie” in Hebrew? This was an exercise we were given in a translation class. The best idiomatic rendering among the responses was — “Tzionut” in quotation marks...
Shark Feeding Frenzy
When my husband was a flight surgeon on the US Air Force base in Guam, he witnessed a feeding frenzy by sharks. Daily, a huge garbage truck would gingerly back up to the edge...
Only in Israel
We have something in Israel that I think exists no where else in the world. It is Hebrew Book Week. Instituted in 1926 in Tel Aviv, today it has grown to dozens of open-air...
Vehi SheAmda, How do you pronounce it?
How do you sing the paragraph in the Hagaddah Vehi SheAmda? Is it Vehi SheAmda LavoSeinu (Ashkenazic) or LavoTeinu (Sefardic) pronunciation ? In Israel a duet, that has BOTH pronunciations simultaneously has become very...
Shop ’till You Drop
How would you explain the Shabbat laws in Israel to a group of visiting mid-career journalists, Jewish and non-Jewish Americans? Led by University of Southern California Professor Diane Winston, nine mid-career journalists will be...
Haredim & Higher Education
At first I wanted to blame the Jerusalem Post. The Post attached a pretty nefarious photo to David Newman’s oped “The yeshiva and the workplace” (October 26). The Post illustrated this upbeat article on...
Pro-choice in Emanuel
I went to observe the 20,000 haredim who demonstrated in Bene Brak on Thurs. 5bTamuz (17June) and read about the 100,000 in Jerusalem who quietly protested against a ruling of the Israel Supreme Court....
Gender Agenda of the RCA
The Orthodox Rabbinical Council of America met this week and on the agenda was gender. This reminded me of another conference of professionals, the Arizona Engineers’ Society (l’havdil) which I attended as a civil...
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