Author: Yaakov Menken

There may not be many articles in Ha’Aretz that charedim would agree with, but here’s one that all can… well, scratch that. Ashkenazic Jews aren’t particularly known for enjoying spicy foods, either. There are...

Mrs. Katz’s post about pluralism today reminded me of something from the Jewish Week’s description of highlights from the USCJ Convention. Here are the two relevant paragraphs: An address by Rabbi Menachem Creditor, the...

Rabbi Reuven Hammer, head of the Rabbinical Court of the Masorti Movement and the Rabbinical Assembly of Israel, has an op-ed on JPost.com which relates directly to my post of yesterday evening. Officially, the...

No time to travel in order to learn about Judaism? Hey, no problem, now a Rabbi will gladly educate you over the Internet, and then invite you to sunny Miami for the “seminar, ceremony,...

So, as mentioned earlier, Ori Pomerantz sent in a sharp question a few weeks back. Imagine that tonight there was a miracle, and tomorrow morning all the rabbis and chazzanim of the heterodox movements...

With all the recent subjects, I’ve never gotten around to answer Ori’s question about what I would think would happen if all the heterodox clergy woke up Orthodox. If you don’t remember, please read...

On the execution of Tookie Williams, I believe that Rabbi Adlerstein’s position is brilliantly written, masterfully argued, and, nonetheless, wrong. “It is hard to find a more convincing argument to reject it, than that...

There’s a new blog up called Beyond Teshuva — it is a group blog written by several people who adopted Orthodoxy later in life, reflecting upon the unique challenges that we “late adopters” have....

Yesterday’s Washington Post featured yet another in an ongoing cycle of articles about lavish Bar and Bat Mitzvahs — the Post’s unique angle is that the spending is getting worse. It used to be...

Credit Michelle Malkin for telling us to “keep the focus where it belongs:” not on Stanley “Tookie” Wilson, but his four victims, Albert Owens, Tsai-Shai Yang, Yen-I Yang and Ye-Chen Lin. Nonetheless, I don’t...