The Secular Sky Is Falling!
This article appeared under a different title in Haaretz earlier this week and is posted here with the paper’s permission. Well, it won’t be long now before Israel institutes penalties for watching television on...
Category: News
What Do They Really Think About Us?
There are few more ungainly or unattractive positions than that of someone patting his own back. Nevertheless, I feel compelled to offer a call-out to HaMercaz L’Mechkar V’Tikshoret Yehudit (The Center for Jewish Research...
Social Injustice
The following essay currently appears on the New York Jewish Week website.. (My regular weekly essays appear in the Wednesday edition of Hamodia.) It was Albert Camus’ insight that bad things often result from...
The (Not So) Subtle Racism of the Draft Bill
In describing the effects of the new draft bill one month ago, I considered only the response of what we would call the “core” charedi community — families in which both parents and children...
Lapid Flunks the Leadership Test
Yair Lapid pushed the criminalization provisions in the new draft law through the cabinet. Without those provisions, he told his cabinet colleagues, he could not sell the law to his supporters. Rather than call...
Pondering the Prayer Gathering
The article below appeared last week, on March 11, in Haaretz. It is republished here with that paper’s permission. The weather in Manhattan on Sunday – a few degrees above freezing – wasn’t as...
Ultra-Cation
It was gratifying to see that a recent essay of mine in the Forward stimulated thoughtful responses. I had made the case for jettisoning the time-honored (if, to me, less than honorable) term “ultra-Orthodox.”...
The “Building” of Children Destroys
Reading the news of the “Million Man Atzeres,” that was the statement of our Sages that came to mind. “The ‘destruction’ of elders builds, [while] the ‘building’ of children destroys” [Megillah 31b]. The Yesh...
The Anarchy Option
My interest in the recently concluded Winter Olympics in Sochi was roughly equivalent to my interest in the recently concluded International Kennel Club dog show in Chicago. Which is to say, nil. But a...
Minyanim and Meta-Halacha
The article below appeared in Haaretz earlier this week, under the title “Partnership minyan is an innovation too far.” It is reproduced here with Haaretz’s permission. What educators call a “teaching moment” is presented...
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