New Old Torah
Chazal instruct us to approach Torah each day with the wonder and excitement of something new and fresh. This is both good advice and a tall order; familiarity and the sense of routine that...
Category: Judaism
A Priest Walks into a Shul…
Have you ever been to a church service? Me neither. Still, I (and perhaps you) have an image of what one is like. And that image, strange as it might seem, is an important...
Looking for Win-Win
Eight or nine years ago, I received a visit from a kollel student in his late ’20s. The young manyoung man in question had been one of the outstanding students in one of Israel’s...
Coney Island Memoirs – Affirmative Action
by Philip Lefkowitz It was the 1960s, a tumultuous time for the civil rights movement in the United States. Cities were burning, race riots where breaking out everywhere. In New York City, Mayor John...
A New Coalition for Israel: It’s Not Just About Us
Over fifty years ago, I was playing checkers with my father, a”h, on a Sunday morning. The next oldest brother in our family line-up, not yet five years old, sat on my father’s lap....
What the Presidency Can Tell Us About Gedolei Yisroel
A few months ago, veteran political columnist James Fallows presented two opposing views of the Obama presidency in a cover story for The Atlantic. It generated much discussion, in part because of its balance,...
Open Mouths and Open Mikes
The power of human speech made the headlines once again this month — even before the WikiLeak shocks had worn off — with two gaffes by prominent American politicians. One of Mitt Romney’s top...
Measured Insularity Does Not a Monk Make
This article appears in the current issue of the New York Jewish Week and is shared here with that paper’s permission. Haredi Jews have become accustomed to their portrayal in a variety of negative...
Agudath Israel statement on same-sex marriage
In the wake of President Obama’s sharing of his personal feeling that the millennia-old institution of marriage should be redefined in contemporary America, National Jewish Democratic Council chair Marc R. Stanley declared his admiration...
How Ami Magazine Convinced Me to Celebrate Yom Ha-Atzmaut
The editorial in Ami did not promote such celebration, of course. It provided an original and thought-provoking reason to celebrate its non-celebration, so to speak. Survivors of the Holocaust would naturally take great comfort...
Recent Comments