Lessons from a Failed Rally
The failure of the rally shows that the adoption of the cause du jour as a new “Jewish value” no longer holds traction. This is not really a new lesson.
Category: Judaism
Bechukosai – To Know What We Don’t
It would be silly to claim a “favorite” Rashi, but one comment made in rare places, including in this week’s parshah, by the author of perfectly succinct yet brilliant glosses to not only Tanach...
Parshas Behar – Don’t Serve Servants
“They are My servants, whom I freed from the land of Egypt” (Vayikra 25:55). Although the Talmud’s comment on the phrase “They are My servants” – “but not the servants of servants” (Bava Kamma...
Take Two – Pesach Sheini’s special significance to my family
“Second Passover,” or Pesach Sheini, a minor Jewish holiday, is anything but minor in my family. It was on that Jewish date, which, in 1945, fell on April 27 (and this year, falls on...
When “Bigot” is Projection
The bigots are those who condemn us for our beliefs. It is important to state this clearly, to repudiate the gaslighting to which we are being subjected.
Kedoshim – Skin in a Zero-Sum Gam
Although, in the end, all tattooing is forbidden by halachah, one opinion in the Mishna (Rabi Shimon ben Yehudah in Rabi Shimon’s name) sees the prohibition as referring specifically to tattooing the name of an...
Ortho-doxxing at the Washington Post
It is fair to say that as Taylor Lorenz researched and wrote her article, she fully understood the evil of what she was doing.
Acharei Mos – “No. You Do ME”
“Propriety” was apparently a theme of the Sadducees, or Tziddukim, one of the camps of Jews during the Second Temple period that rejected the the Torah’s “Oral Law,” the key to understanding the true...
Metzora – Not Just the Kitchen Sink
I once witnessed an amusing exchange between a mother and her four- or five-year-old daughter. The former, trying to do some cooking with the child underfoot, told the little person, “You need to leave...
Tazria – The Little Man Who Wasn’t There
“On the eighth day yimol b’sar arlaso – the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised” (Vayikra, 12:3). Rather than directly command circumcision, the Torah here employs the future passive tense – “it shall...
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