Author: Yitzchok Adlerstein

What do modern-day conversion and Yisro have in common? Not so much, according to the people I know. Records kept over many years by the beis din on which I sit (the RCC, in...

The custom of avoiding kitniyos (legumes – and others!) on Pesach survived a rocky start, and the smirks of our Sephardic brothers and sisters. Survive it did, and never have so many been so...

We get so caught up in the details of the seder that we can lose sight of its broader importance. When we gather bezras Hashem this Friday night, we will all orchestrate different types...

With thanks to those who arranged and attended the shiur today, it is now available for download. It is similar to the style of previous years, with mostly new content from the Chasam Sofer,...

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” may generally be sound advice, but it happily has been ignored in regard to classic Torah works. The last decades have seen a steady stream of improvements...

  You’ve got to watch out for those haredim. They are going to take over the Jewish world, if you don’t stop them. We’ve just learned of another stealth target of theirs – Israel’s...

Certain that our loyal readers wanted more details about the New York Times story on the project to translate Shas into Italian, Cross-Currents’ team of investigative reporters set out to get the inside scoop....

Jonathan Rosenblum and I discovered decades ago that we were kindred spirits. We rarely disagree. We did disagree twice about the recent[1] Klal Perspectives shabbaton in Baltimore, although he won’t find out about the...

A few hours of pure delight at the Biblical Museum of Natural History was one of the dividends of my recent trip to Israel. Open since 2014 and housed, at least for the time...

BEH, I will be giving my annual Pesach shiur for women on Wednesday, April 13th at noon, on the third floor of 1399 S Roxbury Dr. Underground parking across the street at the Museum...