Overplaying the Anti-Semitism Card
That Jews have many enemies cannot be denied. Indeed precisely because the threat posed by those enemies is so great must we think very carefully about defining anti-Semitism and about when to play the...
Category: Judaism
Now It’s OK to work with the Religious Right
Ten years ago, liberal Jews heaped scorn upon those Orthodox — like Rabbi Daniel Lapin of Toward Tradition — who worked with Evangelical Christians on issues where they found common cause. Although liberal Jewish...
What is the “Haredi Education Law?”
As one person pointed out in comments this afternoon, the two Degel haTorah representatives are negotiating to join Olmert’s failing government. Their intended goal is to ensure passage of something called the “Haredi Education...
What Is Wrong With This Picture?
Watch this video at your own peril. It will be painful. You will see young, happy Israelis. They are exuberant, articulate, and full of confidence. They seem pretty clean-cut. No tattoos or piercings or...
Schorsch’s Problem Isn’t Orthodox Jews
Reading Jonathan Schorsch’s latest salvo in his debate with Rabbi Shafran, I can only say that I am struck by how incredibly disingenuous he is. He is marketing a particularly virulent hatred, while piously...
Who Is That Masked Fundamentalist?
Question for the reader: Which well-known Jewish figure is the author of the following recently-penned lines? [T]here is no reason for a famous person who just happens to be Jewish to command special respect,...
Reform and anorexia: two op-ed pieces
Below, two articles juxtaposed. The connection needs no comment. Jonathan Schorsch in the Jerusalem Post (the writer teaches Jewish studies at Columbia University): “Shafran may think that the Orthodox merely reject ‘a thing, a...
What Can be Done about these Canards?
I asked a group of American Yeshiva boys who were our Shabbat guests how they would respond to the accusation by Israel Prize laureate Professor Alice Shalvi that in Jewish marriage the woman is...
At Whom Do We Point Fingers?
When I posted my response to David Ellenson’s latest anti-Orthodox diatribe, I said that Rav Mordechai Eliyahu’s speculation that the Holocaust might have been caused, in spiritual terms, by the old Reform Judaism was...
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