Jewish Traits Gone Bad
I have long suspected that the Jewish stereotypes invoked by comedians, impolite pundits, and anti-Semites contain some grain of truth. After all, even a powerfully positive middah, or personal trait, can, if mangled or...
Category: Jewish World
Getting a Second Opinion
We are all poorer for not realizing that greater gain is to be had from meeting another point of view than from exulting in having one’s own opinions duly seconded.
Missed Message
My dear and esteemed friend Jonathan Rosenblum has taken me to task in Yated Ne’eman for an Ami Magazine essay I wrote entitled “Our Not So Humble Opinions.” My thesis was that it behooves...
Too Close for Moral Comfort
Reminiscent of another time and place, a Rosh Yeshiva in Bnai Brak reportedly received a letter stating “Stop sucking our blood and living on our backs… We’ll fight you physically and you will feel our might on your bodies and against your synagogues.”
The Greatness of Klal Yisroel and the Blizzard of 2010
by Rabbi Meir Goldberg Most of us know about the tremendous chesed, kindness, which abounds in the frum community. We are oftentimes reminded of the greatness that truly epitomizes Klal Yisroel, the Congregation of...
Homerun or Strikeout: A Reply to Rabbi Shafran
Every columnist aspires to write — at least occasionally — something of such originality that he will be quickly distinguished from the common herd of scriveners. In that respect, “Our Not-So-Humble Opinions” by my...
WikiLeaks and Anti-Semitism
WikiLeaks continues to be a big story more than two weeks after the latest batch of State Department documents were released. What has so far been poorly understood, however, are the motivations of WikiLeaks...
Judge Everyone Favorably, Reprise
Does everyone favor their own, except the Jews? It is we who have a Mitzvah to love our fellows like ourselves, and to judge every other Jew favorably, as we would like ourselves to...
Our Not-So-Humble Opinions
So often we seem to feel a need to embrace absolute, take-no-prisoners political opinions; to reject any possibility of ambivalence, much less any admission of ignorance.
The Past in the Present
“I [had] promised [myself] that I would go to Bialystok and something was telling me – maybe it was because I was stubborn — I said I am going to yeshiva and I’m going to go.”
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