Bigotry Watch
First things first: I learned while preparing this that one of the victims of today’s stabbing in Jerusalem is unstable and in critical condition. Whoever he or she may be, and I hope we’ll...
Category: Judaism
What Azoulay Meant About Reform Jews
by Rabbi Pesach Lerner When Israel’s Minister of Religious Affairs, David Azoulay, recently appeared on Galei Zahal Radio to address Jewish conversion and religious standards in Israel, media and political figures picked up on...
An Open Letter To Rabbi Herzl Hefter
by Rabbi Nahum Spirn אֵיךְ נָפְלוּ גִבּוֹרִים – How the mighty have fallen. These words, spoken by King David in his eulogy for King Saul, seem to apply oh-all-too well to you, R’ Herzl....
Planned (Frum) Parenting
I do not think that I am a great parent; I do not know if I am even a good one. Nonetheless, even those of us whose accomplishments are mediocre or worse learn from...
Da’as Torah and the Holocaust
The idea that we have 20/20 hindsight is, in actuality, simply a myth. If hundreds of thousands had fled Europe, sacrificing their dedication to HaShem and His Torah, how do we know history would otherwise have stayed equal?
For What Was the Land Lost?
“Al ma avdah et ha’aretz – For what was the Land lost?” our Sages asked in the wake of the destruction of the Temple. To that question, Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch notes, the historians...
The President Is Not Mad
I thank my friend Rabbi Menken for a vivid demonstration of American democracy at its best. He took Natan Sharansky’s Town Square Test and emerged with his head still perched atop his shoulder blades....
Tisha B’Av: For Whom Do We Mourn?
How the city still sits solitary! Some two thousand years later, transformed into a bustling metropolis, the city and her people still sit and mourn alone. Many revile her today more intensely than the...
Recent Articles on Two Different Kinds of Evolution
A piece I wrote in response to a a review of Marc Shapiro’s most recent book (and, to an extent, to the book itself) can be read here. And one about my personal reluctance...
A Very Bad Deal: Let Us Count the Ways
Upon the signing of an Agreed Framework with North Korea in 1994, President Bill Clinton addressed the American people and assured them, “This is a good deal for the United States.” He explained that...
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