Torah Vs. Egalitarianism
The “Kosel Controversy” – whether “nontraditional” prayer services should be accommodated at the Kosel Maaravi – blazes on, fanned by the winds of politics, courts and “activists.” Respect for the Jewish mesorah at the...
Category: Judaism
Rabbi Maurice Lamm, z”l
We note with great sadness the petirah of one of the deans of the American rabbinate, Rabbi Maurice Lamm. My most vivid recollection of Rabbi Lamm is of the person who firmly put a...
Donniel Hartman Is So…Yesterday!
In a new twist on the old “Jews to the back of the bus” routine, Donniel Hartman, president of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, wants the Jewish G-d to take a back seat...
The Magisterial Short Statement on BDS
I cannot imagine a better, succinct, even-keeled examination of global BDS than this. Not surprisingly, it was penned by a commentator without peer – Yossi Klein Halevi. Bookmark this one, and then give copies...
Random Thoughts on Another Flawed Survey of Orthodox Jews
A new “blockbuster” survey has been published online to offer insights into why some people “leave” Orthodox practice and go OTD (“Off the Derekh”). This most recent entry in Jewish demography is based on...
News and Essays In and Out of Orthodoxy – Parshas Shelach 5776
Rabbonim Issue Call for Action on Child Abuse and Molestation and Call to Action Judaism: Behaalotcha (Diaspora): The gap year – A must-read. The Bostoner Rebbe of Beit Shemesh, zt”l Rabbi Avraham Yaakov Finkel z”l Reb Heshy...
Taking Aim at Massacres
What does the word “magazine” bring to mind? A glossy periodical or, perhaps, a news program? To many Americans, the word would more readily conjure a metal receptacle holding up to 30 or more...
The Rabbi Riskin Article: A Reply to Rabbi Billet
Nearly two weeks ago, Arutz Sheva conducted an interview with Rabbi Shlomo Riskin about a number of subjects, the first of which was Knesset legislation to bar non-Orthodox Israeli clergy from using state-regulated mikva’os for conversions...
The New Book about Open Orthodoxy, and Rabbi Ysoscher Katz’ Critique
This article originally appeared in Times of Israel. The art of deflection and of evading reply to the substance of the argument is not limited to the discourse in the current US Presidential campaign....
Letter in the New York Jewish Week, June 24, 2016
Editor: Gary Rosenblatt asserts that, as per the headline over his recent June 17 essay, “Ruth’s Conversion Would Be Rejected Today” by the Israeli rabbinate. The Jewish religious tradition, however, sees precisely in the...
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