Signs of the Times
After Corporal Gilad Shalit was taken captive, a small notice appeared in our Jerusalem synagogue. Above Shalit’s Hebrew name, Gilad ben Aviva, was a hand –lettered request to recite Psalms and to pray for...
Category: Religion
Thanks, President Katzav
Kudos are due to President Moshe Katsav for refusing to address Eric Yoffie, head of the American Reform movement, by the title “Rav.” Katsav’s refusal can only be explained as an act of conscience....
Off the Derech: Are We Retaining Our Youth?
Yesterday, at the end of a post criticizing Yossi Beilin’s call for new methods to “enable non-religious non-Jews to become non-religious Jews,” I made the following closing remarks: Like many others, Beilin has forgotten...
The Jewish Community isn’t Shrinking, and the Moon is Made of Cheese
Yossi Beilin is still glowing from his success as the Israeli architect of the Oslo and Geneva Accords, both of which, as we recall, assured us that the Palestinian Arabs would forever renounce violence...
Now in Style: Traditional Jewish Burial
Now that Jews across America have adopted non-Jewish burial customs — elaborate, indestructable caskets, embalming, above-ground burial (mausoleums), even cremation (a custom first practiced on Jewish dead in Central Europe, roughly 65 years ago)...
Luther Я (Not) Us!
A reader commented on my piece about waging war against an entire population because of the misdeeds of a few of them. His intention, it seems, was to support me. Look in last week’s...
Katzav and Yoffie… Just What We Didn’t Need
[CORRECTION: Please see the comment from Yisrael below. President Katzav only refuses to refer to non-Orthodox clergy as Rav in Hebrew. As per my statements below, calling them Rav would be entirely inappropriate. I...
Fair Treatment of the Lakewood Internet Ban
Saturday’s Washington Post has (via the Religion News Service) an article from the NJ Star-Ledger, Edict turns many Jews in Lakewood into library regulars. A possible subtitle of the article is “blogs don’t represent...
Is Sociobiology Nuts?
The influence of Darwinism has long since penetrated into the popular consciousness, and spawned new pseudo-sciences, such as sociobiology and evolutionary psychology, which attempt to explain every aspect of human nature as an outgrowth...
The Vote Against Divestment: Three Reasons to Cheer
By now, most of our readers have certainly heard of the momentous victory for fairness at the Presbyterian General Assembly in Birmingham. Because I spent considerable professional time working on this issue for two...
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