Handmaiden of Spirituality
Nothing puts some scientists in a good mood like finding evidence that, at least to their minds, diminishes man’s unique qualities or standing in the universe. Discovering human-like tendencies in the great apes or...
Category: Judaism
What’s that for? Musar from a three-year-old
I am enjoying the privilege of holidaying with my family in the French Alps, so I am far from a minyan. While my children rarely see me davening, especially wearing tefillin, this morning my...
Judge-And-Jury Journalism
Like an amusement park barker inviting passers-by to step right up and throw balls at some unfortunate’s head sticking through a hole, The New York Times editorial page seems to have been calling on...
The Other Giveaway
Israel’s trading of terrorists for the remains of two murdered soldiers caused so much pain and consternation, that another giveaway went by unnoticed at exactly the same time. At the Madrid Interfaith Conference, Rabbi...
Obama: Still Not Ready for Prime Time
On the eve of Senator Barack Obama’s visit last week to Israel, Yossi Klein Halevi penned a gem of an essay in The New Republic in the form of an open letter to the...
Spiritual Fast Food
Were it not so sad, the image of the pop singer teaching Kabbala to the Yankee third baseman could be a comic invention – the once-impregnable fortress of Kabbala overrun by fools and miscreants. The unkindest cut of all is that the headlines link Kabbala with two individuals who are not even Jewish and certainly have no Judaic learning whatsoever, who cannot read or understand a Hebrew word, who cannot even pronounce the word “Kabbala” correctly, who know nothing of its provenance, and whose closest encounter with things Jewish is the corner deli.
What do BTs have to do to be accepted?
In all the articles and comments about whether Ba’alei Teshuva are fully accepted in Frum from Birth communities, one major factor I haven’t seen mentioned is the character of the individual BT. This applies...
See No Evil
Forget four-dollar-a-gallon gas, the sundry financial crises, and the various looming threats posed by Russia, China, et al. One issue alone – the prospect of a nuclear-armed, apocalyptic Iran – dwarfs all else at...
Good Things Happen
Like so much in our world that seems genuine at first, the photograph that graced the front pages of some of the nation’s most respected newspapers earlier this month was in fact a fake....
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