The Three Faces of Eichah
by Daniel Feldman [Editor’s Note: We continue to receive quality contributions answering our call for material regarding the recent tragedy that has befallen us] It has been an awful week for the Jewish people,...
Category: Judaism
The Gracious to the Poor
by Doron Beckerman [YA – Some quite good and quite varied responses are coming in after my call for essays last week. I hope that they will add some clarity and nechamah, some focus...
Refreshing, If Long Overdue
Several weeks ago, I wrote a short post providing an example of Israel’s media twisting the words of Charedi protesters, turning a quote from Torah and Halacha into a perverse call for the death...
Shooting Ourselves in the Foot — Again
With Meah Shearim resembling a war zone last week, and the top headline in every newspaper blaring, “Chareidim . . .,” I felt the need for a voice of sanity. I found him in...
Do You Know Where Your Boychik Is?
After every demonstration that turns violent in Jerusalem, there are inevitably a spate of frantic calls from American parents whose sons have been arrested at the demonstrations, sometimes after having been beaten badly by...
A haredi consensus?
The lead paragraph of a front-page story in Monday’s Jerusalem Post describes “the entire haredi public as having formed “a united front . . . to support the Jerusalem mother who allegedly starved her...
How To Promote Baseless Hatred
Destroying another’s property – or communal property or, for that matter, one’s own property – is also forbidden by the Torah. No exceptions have ever been made in halachic codes for instances where a government policy or action is not to one’s liking.
Oy Lanu Mei-Elbonah Shel Torah – Two Proposals
מה נאמר ומה נצטדק R. Chaim Volozhin writes that by right, we ought not daven for ourselves, but for צערה דשכינה, the pain of the Shechinah, as it were. Chazal pointedly describe the Shechinah...
The Last Taboo: Intermarried Rabbis
“In the Mix” is the name of a monthly column by Julie Wiener, carried by the NY Jewish Week. Ms. Wiener describes herself as “married to a lapsed Catholic — one who has encouraged...
The Rod to Greatness
By Doron Beckerman The tongue of the wise will approve of good sense, and the mouth of imbeciles will cause folly to flow. (Mishlei 15:2) When I’m not writing pieces for Cross-Currents, I’m involved...
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