Category: General

Lay leadership or askanos is a term that can be translated as the nearly all-consuming commitment to communal activity. An askan is someone whose primary life mission is service to the klal. In my...

A translation: Siyum HaShas means Completion of the Talmud. People make a small celebration to mark the Siyum, completion, of a single tractate of Talmud or one of the six orders of the Mishnah....

So much of my time in the last few days had been spent in praise of the intellectual, that I was not fully prepared for the effect that the Siyum HaShas had on my...

The comments on my previous posting taking Edah, Ukeles and Heilman to task have been mostly critical. While there is always the possibility that those who are in agreement with me are silent, in...

One way in which authentic Judaism differs from societal norms currently in vogue in the Western world is that Judaism abhors the cult of hero-worship. Before you lift your strongest finger to punch out...

Edah, the ultra-Modern Orthodox fringe group whose coterie consists substantially of people who are conservadox or otherwise not Orthodox, is outstanding in both its capacity to attract publicity and its capacity to raise funds....

Many thanks to Rabbi Matis Greenblatt, literary editor of Jewish Action, who not only saves me much embarrassment by picking up my errors before publication, but inevitably throws in numerous tidbits of Torah insight....

Dear Friend: We are writing to update you on the recent activities of the newly formed Society for Halakhic Creativity, Innovation, and Renewal. This umbrella organization – known by its acronym, SHICR – was...