In Praise of Fiction
Last week I wrote about the strain of poverty on chareidi society. Don’t feel bad if you forgot, I often can’t remember what I wrote about a week ago. I only remember in this...
Category: Jewish World
Can we talk seriously about poverty?
Child allowances were back in the news last week with Finance Minister Ronnie Bar-On’s call for a further 17 shekel per child monthly cut in next years budget. Even at current rates, a family...
Untruth in Advertising
Thanks all the same but no, I’d prefer my next party not be “the talk of the town.” The advertisement promising town-wide tittering over my gala affair was for a Jerusalem hotel, and appeared...
Be Forewarned — Oversize Posting!
This is an unusual posting for this venue, no obvious relative of the short essays I post weekly. Clicking on “more” below will take you to a long article I worked on over the...
Tangled Up In Jews
Anti-Israel diatribes spring from Iran’s leaders like fleas from a dog, but a recent Iranian Parliament statement stood apart, containing as it did a remarkable admission. The statement was in reaction to a comment...
Judge-And-Jury Journalism
Like an amusement park barker inviting passers-by to step right up and throw balls at some unfortunate’s head sticking through a hole, The New York Times editorial page seems to have been calling on...
Bargain Hunting
For a chance of pace, I thought I’d provide some shopping tips for after the Three Weeks. I’m convinced the marketplace is filled with great bargains, and I’d like to help others find them....
The Jewish Week’s “Haredi Problem”
In a recent column, “Haredim: Underdogs or All-Powerful?”, the New York Jewish Week’s editor, Gary Rosenblatt, writes of a complaint he received from a reader, Chaim, about the paper’s coverage of, and commentary on,...
Spiritual Fast Food
Were it not so sad, the image of the pop singer teaching Kabbala to the Yankee third baseman could be a comic invention – the once-impregnable fortress of Kabbala overrun by fools and miscreants. The unkindest cut of all is that the headlines link Kabbala with two individuals who are not even Jewish and certainly have no Judaic learning whatsoever, who cannot read or understand a Hebrew word, who cannot even pronounce the word “Kabbala” correctly, who know nothing of its provenance, and whose closest encounter with things Jewish is the corner deli.
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