Author: Yitzchok Adlerstein

The current issue of the Columbia Journalism Review provides independent confirmation of positions taken by two of the favorite people in my life – Rav Moshe Feinstein zt”l and my youngest son, Akiva ....

There are things you can’t learn from books. You’ve got to learn them from lawyers. Strange as this seems, it is supported by Maharal. At least the first part. Maharal on Avos 2:9 (according...

Cross-Currents is trying hard to stay out of the political arena. Not that its contributors think that “politics” is outside the arena of Torah commentary. My guess is that every contributor to this blog...

Dostoevsky used to say that Russians imbibe anti-Semitism with their mothers’ milk. Despite the terrible things it portends for our brethren in the FSU, I was somewhat underwhelmed by the news that the RussiState...

Only anti-Semites believe that Jews control the world. Yet anti-Semitism itself has choked and strangled the progress of nations. Writing in the June issue of Commentary, Paul Johnson calls anti-Semitism an irrational disease that...

Rav Shamshon Raphael Hirsch’s famous essay on teaching about science remains, as most of our readers know, at the center of an ongoing controversy. That controversy focuses on the final argument of the essay,...

Yaakov Menken’s recent postings (which I just saw, having returned from my son’s wedding and related festivities) set off a cascade of inner reactions. If you are at all a public figure here in...

Just when I thought we were ready to move on beyond all the Siyum stuff, I’ve found something new to complain about. Some of the observers of the Garden event who hailed from beyond...

As official Jewish spokespeople weigh in on the new Pope, I find their analysis comes up short for my tastes. Most concentrated on his membership in Hitler Youth (forgivable- it wasn’t his choice; there...