Where Less Can Be More
“Can she have a cookie with a Pentagon-K on the box?” the voice on the phone asked and, after receiving my polite but negative response (a Pentagon-K?—now the Defense Department’s in the kashrus business?...
Category: General
Science, Blinded
“Just as ordinary, pig-headed and unreasonable as anybody else” was the eminent twentieth century psychologist H.J. Eysenck’s judgment of scientists. “And their unusually high intelligence,” he added, “only makes their prejudices all the more...
Lucky Loser
Contests aren’t really my thing. I don’t buy lottery tickets or wager on sports (or, for that matter, even know much about them; until recently I thought Miami Heat was, well, a straightforward description,...
Anti-Milah Activist’s Jewish Problem
Two new twists emerged in the West Coast wars against bris milah, or circumcision, recently. The bid to outlaw the practice in the seaside city of Santa Monica, just north of Los Angeles, was...
What America Gets
Many people seemed happy to treat President Obama’s speeches last month on the Middle East and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s before Congress as some sort of sports tournament, rooting and scoring and declaring winners...
French Connection
The latest marchers in the long parade of horribles anxious to murder in the name of a religion of peace are two feckless young men, Ahmed Ferhani, 26, and Mohamed Mamdouh, 20, natives of...
The Helicopter Left Behind
I think that now, weeks since the mortal remains of this generation’s most reviled mass-murderer were offered to fish and crustaceans, it’s safe to bring up an important Jewish thought that should have occurred...
A Well-Trained Seal
The article below, reprinted with permission from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, was distributed by that news service to its subscribers. There is something ironic, to put it politely, about an effort championing ethics that...
Black Like Us
The Chasam Sofer (Rabbi Moshe Sofer, 1762–1839) probably never saw a black person. There weren’t likely very many in 19th century central Europe. But he certainly knew they existed. After all, they are mentioned...
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