All Shabbos, All the Time
This crisis gives us Shabbat all week long. We are home, with our spouses, our children. We spend time trying to work remotely but then we have to get back to real work… We have to deal with our family.
Category: Judaism
Different Hopes For Different Folks
“Number one…” presidential hopeful Joe Biden Jr. said at his March 15 debate with equally hopeful (though less entitled to be so) Senator Bernie Sanders, “if I’m elected president and have an opportunity to...
Responding to Wrath With Calm
It’s strange but true: We sometimes fail to acknowledge the most important thing in the universe. That would be bechirah, Hashem’s astonishing gift of free will to mankind. We humans are able to choose...
Plagues Past and Present
It’s been some 700 years since the bubonic plague ravaged central Asia, killing millions of people. A decade or two later, in October, 1347, a ship from the Crimea docked in Messina, Sicily. Rats...
My Purim’s Highlight
My Purim’s highlight this year was an interaction I had with two little boys, no older than 8 or 9. The shul I attend is often visited by a number of “collectors” asking for...
Masquerading as Feminism
Due to circumstances beyond my control, I didn’t have a column in Hamodia this week, but thought I’d post a Purim-themed thought I wrote several years ago. A joyous and meaningful Purim to all!...
Pathologized Problems
It seems that a good part of my youth was spent in a mental asylum without walls. At least that’s how some mental health professionals might characterize it. Among the boys in my neighborhood...
A Misleading Morph
I’ll never forget coming across the phrase “the Holocaust” – complete with the definite article and capitalized second word – in, of all things, a translation of the Mishnah. More unnerving still was that...
Are Attacks on Curricula Related to Attacks on Jews?
A piece I wrote for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency about the dovetailing of anti-Orthodox sentiment and violence against visibly observant Jews is can be read here.
Abhorrent Action at a Distance
Direct physical attacks on Jews have, and for good reason, unfortunately, dominated the news in recent weeks. But there have been other kinds of attacks on innocent people who are perceived to be Jewish....
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