The Parameters of Polemics
Although one of my recent articles was posted nine days ago, its comments section is still extremely active, with readers energetically debating the article’s main topics as well as the substance of one of...
Category: Judaism
ISIS and Jewish Experience: A Reaction to Atlantic
You don’t need me to tell you that Graeme Wood’s 10,000 word treatment of ISIS in the March Atlantic may prove to be a game-changer. Hard-hitting, detailed, well-researched, it is going to be a...
Ben Yeshiva: You Need Not Leave – A Yotzei Min Ha-Klal Perspective
I read the new (and fabulous!) edition of Klal Perspectives with great intrigue. Grappling with the transition from ben yeshiva to baal habayis is a very sensitive topic in general, but for those personally...
Creativity Restored: the Mesoras HaRav Chumash
R. Yisroel Salanter, it is said, decried the fact that derush had turned the corpus of Chazal from an instructional form into a plaything for rhetoricians. Every rov found pesukim and midrashim to be...
In Praise of Brainwashing
A reference to a Shabbos seudah as “brainwashing.” An attempt by a flag-draped man to enter a Montreal Jewish day school. And a pre-school morah’s report. All took place recently and, together, helped me...
Klal Perspectives: New Issue on the Ben-Torah Baal-HaBayis
It wasn’t so long ago that when people spoke about the issues bnei Torah faced in the workplace, they meant how to deal with the power lunch at a treif restaurant, and the hand...
American Libertarianism, Orthodox Libertarianism, and Lessons from Shushan
Lately, I have been haunted with the feeling that the moral stability of American society is quickly and quite substantially crumbling. Although moral norms have very arguably declined over time, such decline seems to...
Ignore Headlines — and Be a Mensch
In February, 2001, I penned a piece for Moment Magazine that caused quite a ruckus. I had titled it “Time to Come Home,” and it was addressed to Jews who belonged to Conservative Jewish...
Dovid Winiarz – My Brother, My Keeper
By Shmuel Winiarz It hurts. Deeply. The initial blinding shock has passed, but as the sheloshim approaches, my mind inevitably wanders to thinking about my brother Dovid. I internally reflect on his life story...
Gil Tal Obligates All of Us
“Hillel will obligate the poor [to learn Torah]; Rabbi Elazar ben Charsum obligates the rich; and Yosef the evil ones” (Yoma 35b). After Rabbi Elazar ben Charsum, whose father left him one thousand cities...
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