Author: Yitzchok Adlerstein

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...

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, z”l One could have spent all day Sunday reading the tributes to Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks and still not finished them. Without examining their content, the sheer volume of laudatory...

It has been the best of times, and the worst of times, for Torah Judaism. We’ve seen strong, sensible leadership in parts of the community, and failed leadership elsewhere. We’ve seen the resilience of...

“First, know evil.”[1] Rabbenu Bachya argues that good is easily compromised by forces that tarnish and degrade it. Unless a person learns about them, his goodness he develops will be endangered. Better to first...

A young man was mindful of the advice he received about jump-starting conversation with a date. He had already struck out with the first two suggestions: asking about family, or about food. (No, she...

Every now and then, I am bowled over by some piece of Torah that I read. Even if I wrote the words myself. Such was the case after I finished writing my weekly parshah...

Is there an Orthodox angle to the historic normalizing of relations between the UAE and Israel? Several, actually. It will take quite some time before all the details emerge as to how the agreement...

The picture says it all. Last time I was at the Biblical Museum of Natural History, the take-away photo was of a bunch of my family members all holding a single, huge python. This...

Readers of Cross-Currents aren’t surprised when they find two of its writers disagreeing about important issues. Simply put, that is one of the reasons we exist. We remind people that Torah thought is not...

If you remember Tisha B’Av afternoon as the time that the standard fare was a shiur in the gemara of Kamtza and Bar Kamtza. No more. Today, it is our national movie day. I’m...