Author: Yitzchok Adlerstein

He saved my Yiddishkeit, but I never realized it until he was gone. The gift that he provided to so many of us seemed so natural and obvious, that we failed to recognize its...

People look for some sort of sign that Yom Kippur went well upstairs. I can’t promise that, but I did find one that leaves room for huge optimism. Some find it in a gematria...

The name Julia Haart evokes different reactions in our community – all negative. Haart is the Kardashian-wannabe-star of the Netflix series about walking out of the orthodox world to reinvent herself as a successful...

Impulse shopping for ice cream, as our scales will testify, is hardly uncommon. Maybe in this instance it was not so common, because I don’t really eat ice cream. Yet I found myself drawn...

No big deal, they said. The new Pew Report offered few surprises. The 2013 report showed an American Jewish community looking like a patient with multiple systems failure; the current report showed vital signs...

As a woman in a shiur I gave on Shabbos put it, Yom Yerushalayim, sadly, has become the exclusive province of the Dati Leumi community here in Israel. Secular Jews have lost interest; charedim...

For decades, more education was presumed to be the antidote to anti-Semitism. People with more years of education showed less hostility to Jews in survey after survey. Jews and their non-Jewish allies placed their...

Silly, you say. I’m not Yanky because my grandfather is not R. Chaim, shlit”a. You’re showing your age. Today, you can be whatever you want, just by identifying. If I wanted to, I should...

It is with profound sadness that I announce the petirah of one of the gems of our generation, Rabbi Dr. Avraham Yehoshua Heschel Twerski, zt”l. The shock is too great and too sudden for...

A comment I received on my recent tribute to Rabbi Jonathan Sacks z”l is important enough to deserve a more thorough response than usual. You’ll find the comment below, followed by my long reply...