Give Gays a Chance
(A slightly edited version of this article appears, under a different title, in the February 24 issue of the Forward) The recent mini-drama of Rabbi Aryeh Ralbag’s suspension as chief rabbi of his native...
Category: Religion
Hate Speech at the Forward
Hatred. No, “blind hatred,” a “hatred so visceral that anything the man supports must be bad, wrong, and shot down,” because he’s “anti-American, anti-Semitic, or a baby-killing godless Communist.” It’s an “all-encompassing” hatred. It’s...
Confessions of a Giants Fan
I’m tapping this out in my office at Agudath Israel of America’s national headquarters in Manhattan to the tune, so to speak, of blaring horns, booming drums, and the wild shouting of hundreds of...
The Light of Shabbos, and Shabbos without Lights
At a recent Shabbaton of the Nefesh-Yehudi organization, which does kiruv work on the major campuses in Israel, I attended a presentation on the meaning of Shabbos given by Rabbi Yaakov Estreicher, a dynamic...
My Dirshu Story
Now that it’s “merely” three weeks since their annual Siyum (celebration upon completing a unit of Torah study), I ought to contribute a few words about the Dirshu organization. Dirshu (which is created and...
When Tzedek Isn’t: The Conservative Movement Finds a Cause
This article appears in the current issue (Winter 5772) of Dialogue Magazine. When a Jewish religious initiative captures the imagination and garners the admiration of as broad a swath of general and Jewish media...
Unplug Yourself
Could it be that the venerable New York Times actually imitates Mishpacha magazine? Could they possibly be taking their ideas from the Orthodox and using them as their own? Highly unlikely, but the facts...
Charedi Like Me
Back in 1961, a man named John Howard Griffin, a white native of Mansfield, Texas, published a remarkable book. “Black Like Me” was his account of six weeks of travel by bus across the...
Open Season on Charedim — and Torah
One hopes that readers here are not part of the population that peruses tabloids like the New York Post. If they were, though, they would have seen a recent opinion piece that called Jews...
Scrapbook Walls
First time visitors to the Shafran home quickly notice how odd it is. Its walls, that is. Well, what graces them, anyway. The dining room does sport a few normal things—a framed reproduction of...
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