Two-Way Traffic on the Haredi Highway
Have you ever wondered why, in light of the slew of “I survived Orthodoxy but saw the secular light!” essays and books, there no counter-flood of similar writing by some of the many who...
Category: Religion
Enjoy!
Each year, sitting in the sukkah on the first night of Sukkos, with my wife and whoever among our children and grandchildren we are fortunate to have with us for Yom Tov, I feel...
Eliyahu’s Double Plea
The Rambam’s logic, as always, is unassailable. Miracles, he informs us (Hilchos Yesodei HaTorah, 8:1), simply cannot be bases of belief. What appears to us as miraculous, he explains, could always be trickery or...
The King and Us
One of the findings of a recent Pew Research Center report about Orthodox Jews was that for the vast majority of them – are you sitting down? – “religion is very important in their...
Anatomy of a Chumra Society
I owe a large debt of gratitude to Rabbi Karlinsky. The Karlinskys were my Shadchanim some twenty years ago, and it has worked out most satisfactorily. Consider that full disclosure preceding my unvarnished praise...
Atticus and the Yomim Nora’im
The American 1960 classic “To Kill a Mockingbird” was in the news this summer, the result of the publication of an earlier version of it, a sequel in reality, that its author, Harper Lee,...
Ultra-Orthodox Ministers Are Some of Israel’s Best
That’s not my headline, it belongs to Ha’aretz. Yes, really! Ha’aretz columnist Gideon Levy is a member of the hard left — his most recent book is entitled The Punishment of Gaza. But in...
Different Problems Require Different Solutions
What more could we be doing to retain Orthodox youth, given common exposure to the Internet and other challenging environments?
Homosexuality and the Torah Community
It has been difficult for me to articulate a nuanced, “middle of the road” approach that does justice to the subject matter, proudly upholds Torah principles, and at the same time avoids writing that which will hurt the easily offended.
A Footnote on the Matisyahu Debacle
We all know what happened. Matisyahu was invited to the Rototom Sunsplash Reggae Festival. BDS Valencia pulled out the stops to ban the Jew. Rototom demanded that Matisyahu pass an ideological litmus test and...
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