Author: Yaakov Menken

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...

Sometimes, we can be our own worst enemies. And at other times, we can help our enemies when they are getting their just desserts — not quite as bad as “our own worst enemies,”...

The United States District Attorney for the Southern District of New York is suing the incorporated village of Airmont, NY, for violating the civil rights of Orthodox Jews… again. Back in 1991, the District...

A note from a reader tells me that I may have been too nice to the Rabbi turned TV Consultant who wrote a letter saying that she, too, was upset with the portrayal of...

A friend and dedicated reader passed along the following, which relates to my earlier comments concerning a Rabbi as TV Consultant: Dear Cleveland Jewish News, I saw the article you ran in today’s paper...