Global Worrying
I think I’ve discovered what makes me so uncomfortable about the assertion that global warming is a real and urgent problem. A front-page New York Times story on May 1 concerned (thanks, Mr. Rumsfeld,...
Category: Religion
Open Mouths and Open Mikes
The power of human speech made the headlines once again this month — even before the WikiLeak shocks had worn off — with two gaffes by prominent American politicians. One of Mitt Romney’s top...
Agudath Israel statement on same-sex marriage
In the wake of President Obama’s sharing of his personal feeling that the millennia-old institution of marriage should be redefined in contemporary America, National Jewish Democratic Council chair Marc R. Stanley declared his admiration...
Fear the Frum
Were the New Israel Fund a newly landed Martian’s only source of information about Israel, he’d likely imagine the country as a cross between Saudi Arabia and North Korea. In the extraterrestrial’s mind it...
Life Beyond Internet
On Monday, Paul Miller, a Senior Editor at a “technology-focused news publication” called The Verge, announced that he was quitting the Internet for a year. He’s switched to a “dumb” phone, and has pledged...
Fourth Generation Software
Having recounted the story in talks and in writing, I apologize if any readers are encountering it here not for the first time. It’s actually my father’s story; in fact, I only heard it...
Identity Theft
Just before Pesach, best-selling novelist Naomi Ragen was socked with the largest plagiarism judgment ever in Israel. District court judge Yosef Shapira ordered her to pay Sarah Shapiro 233,000 shekels for scenes “stolen” from...
America’s Top Fifty Rabbis
If you ever wondered how to judge the success of a rabbi, you know how complex the matter can be. What are the criteria, the measuring rods, by which a rabbi is judged? But...
Open and Shut Case
The lady on the Staten Island ferry the other day was clearly grunting for my ears. With my unfashionable beard, dark suit and black hat, tagging me as an Orthodox Jew is pretty much...
The Powers That Be
This week, I cannot refer to “this week’s reading” and be universally accurate. The Torah portion read this week in Israel is “out of sync” with the rest of the world, a phenomenon that...
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