Author: Shira Schmidt

Would you like to be a fly on the wall while a battery of secular and modern Orthodox academic experts are discussing the dynamics of change in the haredi world? If so, then today...

I was terribly saddened by the memoir of R.Tzvi Meisels, ztz”l describing his blowing shofar in Auschwitz in 1944. I have, however, questions which really bother me. So began a challenge from Dr.Tzvia Greenfield,...

From the memoirs of Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Meisels, ztz”l describing Rosh Hashanah 1944: “The experience of one transport that left Auschwitz is seared in my memory. With the grace of HASHEM I was miraculously...

21bEllul “Tsunami of porn” is the colorful phrase the Shmuley Boteach coined to describe the skimpy clothing and other phenomena that characterize much of modern behavior. See his Jerusalem Post Sept.2 oped “Why women...

11 b Menahem-Av Formerly Orthodox Professor Noah Feldman, writing in the New York Times Magazine , “Orthodox Paradox,” July 22 two days before Tisha B’Av, complains that the Jewish Day School he attended (Maimonides...

See my comment at the end of this posting for an update on the actual fining of stores that opened on Shabbat. 3 bMenahemAv Only in Israel would the hourly news report a storm...

3 b Menahem Av Remember the party-crashing in the Kamtza and Bar-Kamtza episode? Well, I had my own experience last week. Jonathan Rosenblum describes below what he would have told the Jewish People Policy...

25 bTammuz The future of the Jewish people is in copper mirrors! That is what I would tell several dozen world Jewish leaders who are convening right now in Jerusalem in order to figure...

I asked a group of American Yeshiva boys who were our Shabbat guests how they would respond to the accusation by Israel Prize laureate Professor Alice Shalvi that in Jewish marriage the woman is...

3 bNissan I heard this question this week at all-day conference at Bar Ilan University on “Tefillat Nashim” – issues realted to women’s prayer. There were over a dozen lectures and workshops, many of...