Category: Judaism

Spiritual Fast Food

by Emanuel Feldman · July 29, 2008

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?

by Toby Katz · July 27, 2008

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

by Eytan Kobre · July 25, 2008

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

by Avi Shafran · July 25, 2008

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....

Dirty Harrys

by Yitzchok Adlerstein · July 21, 2008

Several decades ago, a senior official at the Conservative movement’s University of Judaism alerted the wider Los Angeles community by direct mailing to a new threat looming on the Jewish horizon. A growing number...

Hormonal Judaism

by Yitzchok Adlerstein · July 18, 2008

There is good kiruv and there is bad kiruv. After reading ‘You’ve been Aish’d…’ in the Jerusalem Post, even the bad kiruv starts to look better. It is a piece that alternates between silliness...

A World Going Ape

by Avi Shafran · July 11, 2008

It’s easy to snickeringly dismiss the recent disclosure that the late hotelier Leona Helmsley not only left $12 million to her dog but nearly all of the rest of her estate – an estimated...

R. Michoel Ber Weissmandl on Honesty and the Holocaust

by Yitzchok Adlerstein · July 10, 2008

A reader submitted the following brief piece, which may or may not be relevant to the ongoing controversy about the derech of R. Shamshon Raphael Hirsch. It is offered here without comment or elaboration,...

The Post that Wasn’t

by Yaakov Menken · July 7, 2008

When I wrote two weeks ago that I was “back,” and hoped to resume posting more frequently, I also wrote that I planned a post on “Michael Bloomberg, Barack Obama, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance...

How to reply when the doorbell rings

by Emanuel Feldman · July 4, 2008

Many years ago, while a rabbi in Atlanta, I answered a knock on my door one Shabbat afternoon. Standing in front of me was a fine-looking couple – obviously non-Jewish. “Shabbat Shalom, rabbi,” they...

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