Seizing the Lull
A memory from when I was a teen remains vivid. A middle-aged fellow had come to shul one Thursday morning because he had yahrtzeit. The shul hosted a mixture of Jews, some “frum from...
Category: Judaism
How to Teach Propaganda
Professor Amy Kaplan at the University of Pennsylvania explains to faculty how to inculcate hatred for Israel into the college curriculum — even if the course in question has nothing to do with politics...
The Loss of Civic Virtue and its Consequences
Harvard economic historian Niall Ferguson notes that one of the striking features of the history of past civilizations is the “speed with which most of them collapsed, regardless of cause.” The fall of the...
Strafing or Sanctions?
There isn’t a sane person on the planet—at least if evil counts as insanity—who doesn’t wish for Iran to be forced to abandon its nuclear ambitions (or to have them vaporized by one or...
Chumrah Done Wrong
She’s no Deborah Feldman. That makes her story so much more valuable to us. Writing in Tablet, the literary cynosure of every young Jewish iconoclast these days, Avital Chizhik lets us know that she...
A Valuable Tool For the Seder
“Guided spontaneity” might be a good description for the Seder night. What we usually recite as the first part of Hallel becomes “shirah” at the annual revisiting of the birth of our people. The...
Purim in Contemporary Guise
“Since 1945, I was not as afraid as I am now. I am afraid because anti-Semitism, which I had thought belonged to the past, has somehow survived,” Eli Wiesel intones at the beginning of...
Trembling Before Rashi – Redux
By Shaul Gold [Editors’ note: We received a large volume of comments, which were held up in the queue until Rabbi Gold could pen a response to their general drift. We have still not...
Meat and Murder
I have an abiding appreciation of animals. My family has shared living space at one point or another over the years with: a small goat, a large iguana, a beautiful tarantula, an assortment of...
Purim and Polarization
Young Writers Submission by Daniel Weiss One of the claims that Haman leveled against the Jews was that they were “separate and scattered,” that they lacked togetherness. Of all the negative characteristics he could...
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