No Winners in the Torat Hamelech Controversy
About twenty years ago, I publicly debated a rabbi associated with the circles around Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook at the Orthodox Union’s Israel Center, on the topic “Vengeance – Divine or Human?” As the...
Category: Religion
“Some people think Army is Yeshiva”
The question of why the Haredi community tends to avoid or minimize IDF service is one with multiple facets, one of which is the ongoing hostility of the IDF towards Jewish religious practice. A...
Double-Blind Science and the Church of Agnosticism
Rabbi Natan Slifkin recently posted a response to Rabbi Shafran’s essay from yesterday. Unfortunately, he misrepresents what Rabbi Shafran had to say, which was entirely reasonable — and on target. Rabbi Shafran said that...
Science, Blinded
“Just as ordinary, pig-headed and unreasonable as anybody else” was the eminent twentieth century psychologist H.J. Eysenck’s judgment of scientists. “And their unusually high intelligence,” he added, “only makes their prejudices all the more...
Lucky Loser
Contests aren’t really my thing. I don’t buy lottery tickets or wager on sports (or, for that matter, even know much about them; until recently I thought Miami Heat was, well, a straightforward description,...
Bias Has Consequences
According to a new book from a Professor at UCLA, the media’s left-wing bias is so overwhelming and pervasive that the few balanced news outlets appear to have a conservative slant. “It’s like concluding...
Anti-Milah Activist’s Jewish Problem
Two new twists emerged in the West Coast wars against bris milah, or circumcision, recently. The bid to outlaw the practice in the seaside city of Santa Monica, just north of Los Angeles, was...
Finding a Mussar Mentor
Recently, I rejoined a morning shiur that I had attended for many years. The primary attraction was that the shiur had just started Mesillas Yesharim [Path of the Just] for the mussar [ethics] segment....
Why Bother Debating?
Two weeks ago, I was invited to participate in a panel discussion for a group of post-university students from the U.S. and Canada who are contemplating aliyah. The topic was “State and Religion in...
Supporting Those who Love Us Least
Conservative Americans love Israel — and are even philo-Semitic — to a surprising extent. The examples are legion; what struck me today was discovering that David Yeagley, a Comanche Indian and creator of “the...
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