Who’s (Not) a Heretic?
Like many others, I grew up with the understanding that there really weren’t any bona fide apikorsim (heretics) any longer. “Do you know how much a person has to know before he can be...
Category: Religion
‘Yom Kippur’s the obstacle’ – a look into the future
Item: ‘Government panel to alter conversion policy’ (Jerusalem Post, March 5); Item: ‘Since intermarriage is inevitable, humanist liberals say that conversions are unnecessary’ (Haaretz, March 28); ‘New calls for reform of rabbinic conversion courts’...
Naomi Ragen and the Plagiarism Case
by Sarah Shapiro In the Jerusalem Post of February 23, 2007, I read of a plagiarism charge against the author Naomi Ragen, and was prompted by that report to inform the plaintiff’s attorney of...
A Jewish Hero at Virginia Tech
Amid the horror of the massacre at Virginia Tech, the story of a hero is being told. One brave professor blocked the door to his second-floor classroom, holding it closed until his students could...
What Can’t Be Taught in the Classroom
This in from an alert reader: “Teachers drop the Holocaust to avoid offending Muslims.” Not what you expected, was it? We’re used to being told how things like same-sex relationships need to be taught...
Jewish Influence
It isn’t likely that very many people exhaled at long last with relief at the news that three entertainment industry executives had compiled their pet list of “America’s 50 most influential rabbis.” But there...
Honesty on Patrilineal Descent
Most would agree that the single most consistent and dangerous flashpoint in the Orthodox-Heterodox divide is the issue of “Who is a Jew.” Much of the animosity and anger that the heterodox feel about...
UK Soldiers in Captivity
There’s little time to write during the holiday, of course, but the news of the moment surrounds the British marines and naval personnel captured and then recently released by Iran. The news reports say...
An Unexpected Pesach Present
While my children were out purchasing their “afikoman presents” with my in-laws, I happened on my own holiday present in the form of a remarkable article by Dr. Francis Collins. The highly regarded Collins...
The Magnificence in the Mundane
With the approach of spring, the synagogue Torah-reading segued from accounts of the seminal events of Jewish peoplehood, the exodus from Egypt and the revelation at Sinai – to a series of social laws,...
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