What the Ba’alei Teshuva Do for Us
The theme of this year’s annual convention of Agudath Israel of America is the necessity to “Wake the Sleeping Giant” by involving all members of the Torah community in efforts to reach out to...
Category: Jewish World
Sin and Subtext
“New study finds Orthodox women are sexually victimized as much as other American women” read the subheader of a New York Jewish Week article on October 26. The study found nothing of the sort....
Man and Beast
The name Rabbi David Fohrman flashed brightly on my radar screen for the first time in twenty years this past summer. I was in Lawrence, and a good friend told me that he had...
No. We’re sorry. Not Jerusalem.
This morning I counted. There were at least ten times the Hebrew name of Jerusalem, or its synonym Zion, passed my lips. Before breakfast. There was “Jerusalem, praise G-d,” “May You shine a new...
A Lesson From Smokey
On their surface, the e-mails had nothing to do with the uncontrolled wildfires then devastating southern California. Yet the confluence of the messages and the maelstrom held a truth worth contemplating. The topic of...
Resurrection
That the unveiling of a new Reform prayer book didn’t elicit applause from the Orthodox world was hardly surprising. Despite media hailings of the movement’s new liturgical offering as a turn toward Jewish tradition,...
Much Ado About Shmittah
Those “Ultra-Orthodox” in Israel are at it again, inventing new stringencies, coercing other Jews, trying to make a dishonest buck and generally making life unlivable for everybody else. At least that is what seems...
Ann Coulter and the Jewish Problem
Those not hiding in a cave or immersed entirely in Torah study for the past two days — and in either case, why would you then be reading Cross-Currents? — are undoubtedly aware that...
Star Power
The symbol commonly known as the Magen David (“Shield of David”) or more colloquially as the “Jewish Star,” is the subject of an unusual responsum written by Rabbi Moshe Feinstein in 1968 (Igrot Moshe,...
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