Who We Are
The famous early 20th century German-born American financier Otto Kahn, it is told, was once walking in New York with his friend, the humorist Marshall P. Wilder. They must have made a strange pair,...
Category: Judaism
A Column from 2010: Great Expectations
Thoughts of consequence can sometimes arise from the most mundane experiences, even a headache.Opening the medicine cabinet one day, I was struck by a sticker on a prescription container. “Not for use by pregnant...
Save the Mustard Seed!
As Jews the world over listened to Krias HaTorah on Shabbos morning parashas Shoftim, someone at the New York Times was preparing to post a news story quite pertinent to a passuk in the...
Faith Amid the Flames
There was no reason for the young man to not respond to the Nazi’s question. The soldier and his partner had violently burst into his family’s apartment in the Polish city of Lodz, which...
Crime and Capital Punishment
So accustomed are we to incarceration as punishment that it’s easy to forget that punitive confinement is entirely absent from the Jewish mesorah. To be sure, the Torah allows for – and even describes...
Why Orthodoxy needs both — OU congregations and Young Israel shuls
Having been a rabbi at shuls with non-observant Presidents, I know first-hand the night-and-day difference behind the scenes when the Shul President is Torah-observant.
What the Pew Report Got Wrong
An opinion piece I wrote for JTA about a recent Pew report on religious restrictions in countries around the globe, and which had criticism of Israel, can be read here.
Federation Blues
When a media offering chooses to not identify a quoted speaker, it loses a bit of credibility. But the words attributed to several unnamed Jewish federation leaders in a recent report in the Israeli...
Why AOC’s Comments Crossed the Border
Every politician knows you can’t needlessly offend ethnic and other constituencies. The idea that you can make a career out of bigotry towards a particular minority is a notion America was supposed to have discarded 50 years ago.
Mountains to Climb
Ever find yourself in a long “10 items or less” supermarket line waiting for the cashier to check the price of kumquats for the lady who apparently considers all her fruits and vegetables to...
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