To Err is Essential
Students of Daf Yomi will reach it on the seventh day of Chanukah, “it” being a particularly trenchant mishna in Mesechta Shabbos, considering that the following day, “Zos Chanukah,” is identified in the Jewish...
Category: General
Political Campaigns… and the Jewish Problem
It might seem a sacrilegious thought but it’s entirely true: Your vote doesn’t count. When was the last time you heard of an election, even for a local office, decided by one vote? A...
Misguided Markings
In slow but clear Hebrew and with an endearingly wry smile, the elderly Jewish lady recalls a trip to America one summer with her sister. At a bank, she recounts, the teller, a young...
Mrs. Aardvark Comes Home
A time-travelling housefly, transported back to the mid-1980s and spending a Sunday afternoon lazing high on the wall of an ornate living room in a stately home on the fashionable East Side of Providence,...
Hiddur is in the Eye of the Beholder
Olivewood is beautiful. It reminds me of Eretz Yisrael and little carved camels; it has a delicate, calming hue. And silver, well, it is pure and shiny and smooth, and brings sefer Torah ornaments...
Missionaries and Maligners
[This is an Ami Magazine “News Commentary” piece — one of several features I write for the publication.] An umbrella group of institutions engaged in Jewish-Christian relations and the Anti-Defamation League both issued statements...
Our Wrong and Rightful Role in the Presidential Election
The noise, news, deception and demagoguery that emanate from political conventions tend to intoxicate some Americans to break out their own flags and flyers and root loudly for their guy (and against the other...
Journalism and Sausages
Some reporters have punished me over the past few years, for doing something they don’t like—asking that they pose their questions by e-mail. Some background: As the media liaison for Agudath Israel of America,...
A Second Salvo at Obama
In his editorial last week, Ami’s editor Rabbi Yitzchok Frankfurter raised an important point about religious Jews’ presidential election priorities. An interview he conducted earlier this summer included assertions about President Obama that, were...
Sour Gripes
Like pretty much all publicity, the heavy reportage of the Siyum HaShas at MetLife Stadium earlier this month was something of a two-edged sword. Over the weeks since the Siyum, awareness of the event...
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