Category: General

As so often happens, systems under stress yield the most information. Think of supercolliders giving us the best guesses as to the composition of “ordinary” matter. Or the really strange cases in the gemara...

Lots of hungry people in Houston are now being fed. As reported here earlier, the Dallas community assumed responsibility for providing fresh meals, coordinating with HKA – Houston Kashruth Association. Three caterers in Dallas...

Chances are that you don’t need me for this. You already understand that the ubiquitous smartphone, to the naked eye at least, has wreaked havoc with human communications, with attention spans, with happiness itself....

I asked Rabbi Yehoshua Wender, mara d’asra of Young Israel of Houston, for a status report for his community. He offered the remarks he sent out to his own shul; they capture what his...

Thanks to a prominent US rabbi who wishes to stay anonymous, Cross-Currents is pleased to offer a translation of the Shmuel Pliskin article on the Chofetz Chaim’s reaction to a solar eclipse that he...

When public figures speak about issues “becoming a distraction”, it usually means that they are engaging in damage control. This is no exception.

We have all read about the incredible tragedy of Malky Klein. While there is always going to be unknown information about these and other similar cases, such that people will claim that we lack...

A pre-Tisha B’Av message: there are signs of hope. At least in Israel. We’re especially sensitive to it approaching the national day of Jewish mourning. We’ve internalized all the exhortations about unity, and how...

West Side Judaica, the venerable seforim store that has served as a landmark of Orthodox Judaism in Manhattan for well over half a century, just announced its upcoming closure. While the closure of any seforim store –...