Rabbinic Controversy and the Lessons of History
While “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” (Santayana) it is not clear that those who do remember escape it. When it comes to rabbinic disputes, that may not be...
Category: Judaism
UK Soldiers in Captivity
There’s little time to write during the holiday, of course, but the news of the moment surrounds the British marines and naval personnel captured and then recently released by Iran. The news reports say...
An Unexpected Pesach Present
While my children were out purchasing their “afikoman presents” with my in-laws, I happened on my own holiday present in the form of a remarkable article by Dr. Francis Collins. The highly regarded Collins...
The Magnificence in the Mundane
With the approach of spring, the synagogue Torah-reading segued from accounts of the seminal events of Jewish peoplehood, the exodus from Egypt and the revelation at Sinai – to a series of social laws,...
A Tale of Two Synagogues
While the byline may be mine, both the title and much of the content herein were contributed by Rabbi Dovid Katz, of Beth Abraham Congregation here in Baltimore. His drasha this morning related to...
Enhancing SiteRecommender
Fighting web comment spam continues to be a major issue with popular blogs. We installed the ‘akismet’ tool for WordPress on January 2, 2006, and by July 14 it had trapped over 10,000 spams....
Squid Pro Quo
The half-ton squid caught in waters south of New Zealand in February – 33 feet long and weighing 1089 pounds – isn’t kosher, but it can still serve as food for Jewish thought. Such...
A Pesach Thought
A sefer I had not turned to till this year yielded one of the most delectable thoughts on the Hagaddah I’ve seen this season. I happily share it with our readers. The Baal HaHagaddah...
Small Victory in the Matzah Wars
The battle between fans of hand shmurah and machine continues unabated, having changed very little since the opening rounds in the early nineteenth century. Some people point to the halachic difficulty in incorporating kavanah...
Whither Conservatism? – I
As the title indicates, this will be (or, given my track record, might be) the first of several posts focusing on recent developments in the Conservative movement. I therefore want to preface these posts...
Recent Comments