The Power of Temptation
The news these days is not at all new. It centers on man’s eternal struggle with temptation, and his occasional spectacular failings – as exemplified by ex-Gov. Eliot Spitzer of New York. The Talmudic...
Category: Morality
As Pure as the Driven Snow
There is nothing like an early morning snow. The brown winter earth is covered by a stunning white tablecloth – pure, clean, and unsullied. As the day goes on, the snow becomes victim to...
Teaching Truth
Two familiar stories: “The Boy Who Cried Wolf,” and “George Washington and the Cherry Tree.” For argument’s sake, let’s take George Washington’s name out of the second story, because he’s so famous. In the...
Talk to the Snakes
In a 1938 essay, Mohandas (“Mahatma”) Gandhi, the spiritual and political leader of the Indian independence movement, counseled Jews in Nazi Germany to neither flee nor resist but rather offer themselves up to be...
Disenfranchised
From the Jewish Council for Public Affairs: January 19th is one of the most important contests in the Democratic and Republican quests for their parties’ nomination for the presidency. It is also Shabbat. This...
Too Much Information
Winter, when my commute home from Manhattan on the Staten Island ferry is shrouded in darkness, provides me a singular opportunity. That’s because the thousands of other commuters sailing along with me are more...
The Nature of Nature
It is a strange and disorienting panorama that Rabbi E. E. Dessler, the celebrated Jewish thinker (1892-1953) asks us to ponder: a world where the dead routinely rise from their graves but no grain...
Sin and Subtext
“New study finds Orthodox women are sexually victimized as much as other American women” read the subheader of a New York Jewish Week article on October 26. The study found nothing of the sort....
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