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...
Category: News
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...
The Devil’s In The Daydreams
One would be forgiven, especially were one an optimist, for imagining that recent reports of the government of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s donation of $400,000 to a Teheran Jewish hospital might signal something positive...
Reb Meir Schuster zt”l – An Appreciation
By Rabbi Yair Hoffman for 5tjt.com It is a sad day for the Torah world because of the loss of this great, great man. Rav Meir Schuster zatzal passed away today after a debilitating...
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