It’s About Standards
Admittedly, I was as surprised as anyone to see “Gentile Lubavitcher refused conversion” in the Jerusalem Post. While it may be true that the belief that a deceased individual is the Messiah is foreign...
Category: News
No. We’re sorry. Not Jerusalem.
This morning I counted. There were at least ten times the Hebrew name of Jerusalem, or its synonym Zion, passed my lips. Before breakfast. There was “Jerusalem, praise G-d,” “May You shine a new...
A Lesson From Smokey
On their surface, the e-mails had nothing to do with the uncontrolled wildfires then devastating southern California. Yet the confluence of the messages and the maelstrom held a truth worth contemplating. The topic of...
Much Ado About Shmittah
Those “Ultra-Orthodox” in Israel are at it again, inventing new stringencies, coercing other Jews, trying to make a dishonest buck and generally making life unlivable for everybody else. At least that is what seems...
Ann Coulter and the Jewish Problem
Those not hiding in a cave or immersed entirely in Torah study for the past two days — and in either case, why would you then be reading Cross-Currents? — are undoubtedly aware that...
Saving Mother Teresa
Time Magazine’s cover story this week provides an opportunity for what Einstein (and others) called a “thought experiment.” Time examines a different side of Mother Teresa. A veritable icon of spiritual strength and confidence...
Ready for Martyrdom
Today’s Jewish World Review carries an article about Saraa Barhoum, “the young star of Hamas television’s best-known children’s show.” The show is “best known for bringing the world a militant Mickey Mouse look-alike and...
Feldman’s Bad Faith
Harvard Professor Noah Feldman’s lengthy whine in the July 22 New York Times Magazine about the failure of Boston’s modern Orthodox Maimonides School to acknowledge his marriage to a Korean-American fellow professor and the...
Actions, Values, and Education
by Rabbi Doron Beckerman Much virtual ink has been spilled in recent months over the acts of vandalism, hooliganism, and general bad Middos of various sub-sectors of Charedi society. One of the themes which...
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