Plane Talk
The Israel Airports Authority has rejected a billboard urging female airline passengers at Ben-Gurion Airport not to give up their seats to Orthodox men who don’t want to sit next to women. The billboard,...
Category: Religion
Chastened By a Midrash
I don’t find it terribly hard to be tolerant of others’ political points of view, even when they are far from my own. I try to be mindful of the fact that, as Chazal...
No, Mr. Lauder, Israel is not Descending into Theocracy
A piece I wrote for Forward about Ronald Lauder’s recent op-ed in the New York Times can be read here.
Amusing, And, Then Again, Not So Much
You’d think it was a Purim joke. But, no, “Operation Schtickle Pioneer” is a thing. At least in one person’s mind. Did you know that a Jewish cabal is planning to make “large areas...
Habeas Corpus for Horses?
Over the years, thanks to some creative, unusual talmidim I was privileged to teach when I was a mesivta Rebbe, I have had an assortment of pets (the animal sort). Each of several Purims,...
When Jews Target Jews
How often do we hear that Orthodox Jews care only about themselves, and don’t even accept the Jewish status of other Jews? To stereotype a particular group, whether religious or ethnic, as being supremacist is part of the problem, not the solution.
The Orthodox Union isolates the final four
The four extreme-left organizations in the OU fold are the end of a trend that once did not have to be discussed, because it was not imaginable.
Hazards, Hazards Everywhere
My first earthquake was, as you might imagine, unsettling. I was part of a yeshivah in Northern California in the 1970s, and my wife and I spent our first five years of marriage there,...
The “shul” I won’t attend
Why not? Because I may not. The Orthodox Union name on food is a guarantee that it is kosher. Not so with synagogues.
The Jewish Connection
The vandalism of a Fort Smith, Arkansas mosque in 2016 by three young local men wouldn’t seem to have any Jewish connection. But it did. Or, better, it turns out that it does. The...
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