Category: Judaism
We are Lubavitchers… and Janet Reno is Charedi
The Forward this week has a story about the effort to secure just treatment for Sholom Rubashkin, regarding whom prosecutors have asked for a 25-year sentence, down from their earlier request for a life...
Notes From a Hollywood Dinner
The key to a successful fund-raiser in our community is often the choice of honorees. You look to find people connected enough that their friends will attend (and contribute) in droves. If you are...
The Mike’s Always On
The British election campaign just ended would seem an unlikely source for a Torah teaching moment, but there it was. One of the blows the Labour Party absorbed in the days preceding the election...
No Smokers for My Daughters
I always find it amusing when readers of fiction seek to engage the fictional characters – or their creator – in argument. Such was the case, in the Mishpacha Magazine serial “Whispers in the...
The Triumphalism Meme and Its Uses
Amidst all the controversy that Rabbi Landesman’s recent post sparked, one particular statement of his failed to receive the attention it deserves. He wrote that he is “deeply concerned by the chareidi triumphalism often...
Thinking Jewishly
A few years back, I spent two or three hours in the Boeing Museum of Flight in Seattle. It wasn’t enough. The story told there cannot help fill one with awe. The fantasy of...
Torah Always Matters
This was not an easy blogging week. The issue of women’s ordination brought some sharp divisions within the community into focus, including fundamentally different conceptions of halachic process and authority. Surprisingly, the most jarring...
The Day the RCA Became Agudah
Not in the way you think. This is written in praise of the RCA, not to score points for Agudah. (I wouldn’t take sides – I have a high regard for, and work with,...
Of Cartoons and Coldhearted Cowardice – Part 1
This week, the New York Times’ token center-right columnist, Ross Douthat, had an important piece on the contradictory notions of censorship in contemporary society. Reading it through Jewish lenses, though, one can see its...
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