Author: Yaakov Menken

“They’ve Got Rhythm,” says the article, accompanied by a large photo of participants in a Jewish drum circle. It dominates the front page of the Washington Jewish Week, and runs for several additional pages....

[This is the second time in as many entries that I find myself posting shortly after another who is greater in chochmah (wisdom), who wrote something that everyone should see. I just hope that...

This morning, President George Bush performed a “recess appointment,” bypassing the Senate confirmation process and sending John Bolton to the United Nations. The politics of this could be discussed ad nauseum, and preferably not...

Several days ago, Rabbi Adlerstein commented regarding the deleterious effects of television, and wrote that children whose classmates were free of its influence could perceive the difference between themselves and other children even in...

I just spoke with a wonderful man named Rabbi Dovid Vandervelde. He is a real estate manager, and serves as the (unpaid) president of a licensed adoption agency. You may have received an email...

Many years ago, one of the Rabbis teaching through Torah.org was embarrassed to realize he had sent out a weekly message concerning the Torah Reading for Parshas Bila’am. It was a very understandable slip,...

While Dr. Schick has just contributed a new article, I think his previous one, about Jewish outreach, warrants further analysis and exploration. To an extent kiruv (Jewish outreach) requires a suspension of reality. This...

Several weeks ago, I wrote that the Conservative Movement’s Rabbi Susan Grossman had mischaracterized Judaism’s understanding of when life begins, and the Jewish position on abortion, in an opinion piece in the Baltimore Jewish...

On a northbound train today, the passenger who sat down next to me turned out to be a Reconstructionist Rabbi, a senior staff member of the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation. We shared the opportunity to...