Category: Judaism

The two pieces that follow deal, respectively, with the relevance of Rav Shamshon Raphael Hirsch for the relationship of Torah Jews to their fellow Jews and with what he still offers to Torah Jews...

“I don’t care what group you identify with, as long as you are ashamed of it.” There is much wisdom in the throw-away line with which Dennis Prager frequently challenges audiences to admit to...

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has stated that Israel must do everything in its power to bring back Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, regardless of whether they are dead or alive. From his statement,...

The London Times reports that the Catholic Church is discussing reintroducing the Latin Mass largely abandoned in the aftermath of Vatican II. See here for details. Apparently, the Pope is writing to every seminary...

While Eytan Kobre wasn’t referring to me when he wrote “Jack is Back” early last week, it would be true in any case. [Yaakov -> Jacob -> Jack. In my Yeshiva days it was...

We didn’t stop him the last time around when his victim was Conservatism, as I had presciently recommended, and lo and behold, JTS’s Jack Wertheimer is back on the attack against the non-Orthodox, this...

Several weeks into the current conversion fracas, and I have participated in a webcam debate, read two of Rabbi Sherman’s piskei din, plus teshuvos both modern and pre-modern, several articles in Techumin, a few...

by Rabbi Elchonon Oberstein I have just come home from the wedding of Hershel and Esther Boehm’s daughter Rifky to Shuie Anisfeld. As at most frum weddings, there was a long wait for the...