Bricks for Bombs
A driver, reportedly shouting an Islamic slogan, rammed a vehicle into pedestrians in the French city of Dijon last Sunday, injuring twelve people. Understandably, the attack (and several subsequent ones in France) brought back...
Category: Morality
Letter in NYT Book Review
A slightly edited version of the letter below appears in the current New York Times Book Review: Editor: In reviewing “Living the Secular Life,” Susan Jacoby misunderstands the argument of those who maintain that...
Moral Climate Change
My pre-Sukkos column about the furious, quasi-religious zeal of some environmental alarmists apparently generated some… well, furious, quasi-religious zeal. In an editorial, the New Jersey Jewish Standard’s managing editor mocked my contention that the...
“Personal Torah”
A recent announcement by a respected Conservative rabbi has been trumpeted widely as evidence of his heroism. My take is somewhat different, and was published, to the periodical’s credit, by the Forward. You can...
Malignancies
There’s nothing remotely funny, of course, about rabid Islamists beheading innocent Westerners they have kidnapped (or their fellow Muslims, for that matter). Yet, there is something bizarrely droll about the characterization of such slaughter,...
Letter in NYT
To the Editor: Dr. Barron H. Lerner concedes that it was proper for medicine to abandon the medical paternalism that had doctors make “life-and-death decisions for patients by themselves,” but he asserts that doctors...
Immoral “Morality”
In a good illustration of just how thick people who are intellectually gifted can be, the well-known biologist and militant atheist Richard Dawkins recently offered his opinion that Down syndrome children would best be...
Kidneys, Cash and Caring
Over recent years, “Israelis have played a disproportionate role” in organ trafficking, The New York Times reported recently in a lengthy front-page story. Some Israeli entrepreneurs “have pocketed enormous sums for arranging overseas transplants...
Much Ado About Something
I suppose I should have realized something extraordinary was afoot when a friend messaged me on Facebook to ask if I was “okay.” I wondered what he meant, until he said that he’d heard...
Death of an Icon
I grew up watching Mork. I’ve seen Aladdin. I even, during college, watched him perform live. But I never knew Robin Williams. He was the consummate entertainer. He just knew how to make us...
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