The State Triumphs, and a Patient Dies
Once again, life imitates art. The result is not pretty. Doc Daneeka, a fictional character in Joseph Heller’s modern classic, explains its eponymous Catch-22. A flyer can escape combat duty if he is insane....
Category: General
The Embrace of Generations
by Reuven Ungar I The Remnant of the Sages- Pleitat Sofreihem In his monumental eulogy for Rav Chaim Heller, Rav Soloveitchik relates to the phrase “Pleitat Sofreihem” in the Shemoneh Esreh. Why doesn’t “Sofreihem” suffice;...
Vo’eschanan – Little Sins Fuel Bigger Ones
The Kotzker Rebbe likely meant it as a poignant joke when he reportedly remarked that the reason the Ten Commandments had to be both seen and heard (Chazal describe the revelation at Har Sinai...
Devarim – The Rock’s Lost Lesson
In Moshe Rabbeinu’s parting rebuke of Klal Yisrael for “not believing in Hashem” (Devarim 1:32), for all its complaining in the wake of the report of the meraglim and beyond, he refers to Hashem’s...
Were We Wrong About Chabad?
For decades, Chabad’s want-to-wrap-tefillin legions made us feel uncomfortable. More bluntly, we mocked them. To be sure, that was only half of the picture. We openly admired Chabad’s mesiras nefesh, and their very real...
Judicial Reform Gets a Plug from a High Court Justice
Not intentionally, of course. And not from a justice of the Israeli Supreme Court. Consider the following [with very minor edits in brackets]: At the behest of a party that has suffered no injury,...
A Secular-Haredi Debate on Israel’s Cultural War
By Heshy Grossman and Dan Perry [Editor’s Note: The dialogue that follows is refreshing, given that too many folks these days are given to talking past each other, rather than to each other. The...
Artificial Indoctrination: AI engines seem anything but objective
AI language models appear to be programmed to favor a particular ideological slant, to assert woke doctrine as fact, and to avoid facts seen as opposing it.
Korach – Monkeys in the Crowd
The model for all subsequent demagogues in history, Korach told the people that his grievance was really their grievance, that he was standing up not for himself but for them. And he used snideness...
Sefaria and Koren – A Concerned Look
I write the following without any agenda other than to share information that has already been made public voluntarily by the parties under discussion. It pains me to write anything that can hinder people’s...
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