Hashem Helps the Givers
In 1971, a Chassidishe yungerman with $500 in extra money from his wedding decided to start a gemach. By the late ‘80s, that gemach was lending over ten million dollars a year. How did...
Category: Jewish World
A bad idea that won’t go away
Recent years have witnessed repeated pleas for liberalization of the standards of conversion to Judaism. Most often those demands center on the State of Israel where the Chief Rabbinate still maintains authority over conversions...
Hypocrisy, Thy Name is Meretz
Another gem from Jameel: The winter session of the Knesset is now in session. MK Chaim Oron (Meretz) ascended the podium of Israel’s parliament and proposed a new law: Any person who attempts to...
Pre-Hoshana Rabba Apologies
Before the gates and books are closed on Hoshana Rabba, I would like to make the following amends. 1) Apologies to Rahel Jaskow . Yaakov Menken and others were unfairly harsh with Rahel Jaskow...
Was Ezra haredi?
Was Biblical Ezra the Scribe ultra-Orthodox? What lies behind this seemingly silly question is a set of serious questions: When did Torah-observant Jewry divide into Orthodox, modern Orthodox, ultra-Orthodox, etc.? Were Moshe Rabbenu, Ezra...
A Jewish Answer to Neturei Karta
This answer was just posted to JewishAnswers yesterday. I don’t know who wrote it, but it could have been most anyone in the JewishAnswers group. I would be interested to know what you think...
Rabbis with Answers
The JTA ran an article recently about the development of new web sites to answer questions from Jews around the world. Our own JewishAnswers.org features prominently, of course, though the article missed what I...
Another Masterpiece by Rabbi Luban
Several years ago Rabbi Yaakov Luban, Executive Rabbinic Coordinator of the Kashruth Department at the Orthodox Union, wrote a particularly creative and effective piece on teshuva and the Heavenly judgment, using computer-oriented images and...
For them, Yom Kippur was easy as pie
Erev Yom Hakippurim, 5767. My Netanya neighbor Livia Bitton Jackson wrote in her Holocaust memoirs, I Have Lived a Thousand Years and Elli: Coming of Age in the Holocaust that she forced herself and...
Monsey Poultry Close-out
R Adlerstein makes a big fuss about his non-comment and insinuates that all who comment on the scandal or take a side in it will soon need strong suntan lotion. Well then, why did...
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