Response to “First Step:LGBTQ+ and the Frum Community”
Several years ago, I was sitting with an adam gadol – an internationally-renowned rosh yeshiva and posek, who said that he had just privately spoken on the phone with a man who confided that...
Category: General
A First Step:LGBTQ+ and the Frum Community
By Rabbi Yisrael Motzen She hadn’t spoken to her parents in twenty-seven years. Her siblings had intervened, her uncles and aunts had tried to reason with them, but her parents were adamant, their daughter...
As Good an Omen as it Gets
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...
Haazinu – Not Bad But Best
A man once visited the saintly Chafetz Chaim and the sage asked him how things were going for him. The visitor responded, “Well, it wouldn’t hurt if they were a bit better.” “How can...
My Unorthodox 5781
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...
Parshas Ekev – Does Heaven Play Favorites? (and more)
Well, does He or doesn’t He? Hashem, that is. Does he show special favor to some or not? That question is placed by Rabbi Ami or Rabbi Asi (Berachos 20b) in the mouths of...
Ben and Jerry’s: Not Your Plain-Vanilla Crisis
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...
Parshas Devarim: Timeless
Sefer Devarim begins with Moshe Rabbeinu’s recounting of the Jewish People’s history since the exodus from Egypt, through the years of desert-wandering. And our communal reading of the beginning of the sefer coincides yearly...
The New Jew
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...
Parshas Naso- An Opportunity, Not an Ordeal
I cringe when I read someone’s portrayal of the law of Sotah ritual as some sort of “trial by ordeal.” That phrase conjures images like the 17th century Salem witch trials, when Puritans invoked...
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