Etiquette and Ethics
This year, the first day of Shavuos fell on a Sunday. Were there any Tzadukim and Baitusim still around today, they would have been happy. Because those rejecters of the mesorah contended that Shavuos...
Category: Judaism
Sinai and Jewish Unity
Of all the many sterling qualities of the chareidi community in Israel, I suspect no one would list public relations acumen near the top. And of the many public relations failures of the community...
Citifield: A Scorecard
No event on the scale of the recent Citifield asifa takes place without its enthusiasts and without its detractors, without some surrounding hype and without some cynical push-back. With the passage of time, it...
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...
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...
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