Unrighteous Indignation
And here, all this time, we thought Auschwitz was a Polish death camp. It was, of course, at least in the sense that it was a place in Poland where upward of a million...
Volozhin’s Got Talent!
Pragmatic isolationism vs. an obligation to share the Torah’s vision with non-Jewish Americans. Pose those choices to a group of charedi-identifying yeshiva students who expressed an interest in conservative politics. What would you expect...
Illusions of Objectivity
Some American journalists assigned to the political beat are having a hard time. Their dilemma is named Donald Trump, a man they don’t feel they can cover objectively. Those troubled are reporters with a...
Satmar: Do They Take Us For Fools?
I was puzzled by the anguished responses of some of my friends to the videos of children at two Satmar camps being indoctrinated in the fine art of hatred of Zionists. Publicized on Yeshiva...
Summer Camps and Summer Camps
There are all sorts of summer camps. Most familiar to most of us are summer youth experiences like Camp Agudah’s various branch-camps and the broad assortment of others like them. They combine Torah-study and...
Taking a Break, Making a Few Observations
After three years of documenting and critiquing various aspects of Open Orthodoxy, I am taking a break. A temporary break, but a break that I have been contemplating for some time. I would like...
News and Essays In and Out of Orthodoxy – Parshas Va’eschanan 5776
Rav Aryeh Finkel zt”l Tens of Thousands Attend Levayah of Harav Finkel, zt”l With a Heart Full of Love 1956 An Unprecedented Gathering in Support of Torah: The Untold Story – What an important video,...
Silence Can Be Golden
What’s omitted from a discussion can sometimes speak quite loudly. And sometimes quite disturbingly. That’s true, I think, about the national conversation about the Khizr and Ghazala Khan/Donald Trump contretemps. Unless you’ve been summering...
Tisha B’Av – Back to Reality
Tisha B’Av is an extremely serious and somber day. It is also a day that we may hope to quickly move past and readily leave behind, as we continue with our summer plans and...
He Never Promised Us A Rose Garden
Tisha B’Av may not be anyone’s favorite, but it may be just what the Good Doctor ordered to treat a very modern malady. Jewish calendar events, we are told[1], are never commemoratives. We don’t...