Now Why Didn’t I Say That?
One of our avid readers brought the following quote to my attention. It doesn’t say anything we don’t already know, but it should humble us mere mortals who would never put things so elegantly...
Author: Yitzchok Adlerstein
Blogging – An Alternative Mission Statement
A few days ago, Rabbi Menken offered his reasons for blogging, and essentially his raison d’etre for Cross-Currents. I respectfully dissent. I will beg the forgiveness of readers who turn to these pages looking...
The Strangeness and Non-Strangeness of Higher Mathematics
Mathematicians don’t easily get excited. When my Shabbos-after-mincha chavrusa (Torah study partner) Dr Barry Simon told me with some urgency that I must read a fascinating article in the current issue of the New...
The World Council of Churches and Making Religion Irrelevant
Good religion, bad religion. Differentiating between them jumped into prominence in the aftermath of 9/11. Americans who ordinarily gave religion a wide berth suddenly had to contemplate religious warfare on their native soil. Europeans...
A Topsy-Turvy World
Just a handful of years ago, a number of orthodoxies were taken for granted by many. Global anti-Semitism (outside of the Arab world) was on the decline. Given events of the Holocaust, Jews still...
The End of European Jewry
Unless the unexpected happens, the time has come for Europe’s remaining Jewish communities to pack up and call it quits. Norway’s leading daily published an op-ed by Jostein Gaarder, one of Europe’s most celebrated...
Mel Gibson’s Toughest Role
Mel Gibson’s powerful and on-target apology to the Jewish community for his anti-Semitic tirade was infinitely better than his weak and unsatisfying first statement. It would be a mistake for the Jewish community to...
Al Zeh Hayah Daveh Libenu
Sometimes it all comes down to a single story. Even an entire war. Many hundreds of us stood cheek to jowl in a Los Angeles shul on Sunday for a neighborhood prayer gathering. The...
An Elegant Credo
Profound and complex ideas do not the most memorable speeches make. In reaching the crowd, the speaker is better off framing simple, straightforward ideas in effective language. Think Gettysburg Address. British Chief Rabbi Sir...
Feeling Good About Tisha B’Av
Only one voice of optimism carried over last week’s sustained background of sadness and despair. Jonathan Rosenblum, writing in Yated, cobbled together some of the positive consequences that have emerged from the current war...
Recent Comments