I was asked by Jewish Action to expand upon and flesh out the issues in my Cross-Currents article about rabbinic dignity, for a Jewish action article on the subject; the Jewish Action article was just published, accompanied by...
Looking for something to sink your teeth into during Chanukah? Try the halachos of chocolate Chanukah gelt and the history of Jews and chocolate. Halachic questions are as numerous as chocolate beans in a...
Twenty years ago, no one thought it was “triumphalism” to refer to the exponential growth of the observant community. At that time, it was termed “unrealistic” — though then, as now, it was very real.
In his life — and especially in his death — Ezra was a nexus point where the four major forces that define Judaism come together: God, Torah, the Jewish People and Eretz Yisra’el.
Jewish Action, the Orthodox Union’s quarterly, celebrates its thirtieth anniversary with a number of articles marking the event. An Orthodox high-quality, glossy color publication was ahead of its time in 1985. It anticipated those...
There were ample arrows in my quiver for shooting down the question, or at least for deflecting it. But our Shabbos night seudah guest, a young Jewish woman with limited Jewish background visiting the...
In analytical Torah study, we learn to distinguish between a siman and a sibah – to differentiate between that which is a symptom and that which is a core factor which gives rise to...
The death of Ezra Schwartz became a national tragedy for America, Why has his tragic murder merited the attention it has received?
One of our readers with an impish sense of humor sent me a link to a recent performance by the Jewish People’s Philharmonic Chorus of Schiller’s Ode to Joy in Yiddish. [WARNING: It is...
Despite the great efforts of great rabbinical leaders and explicators of Jewish thought and belief, every generation has seen Orthodoxy lose the fealty of numbers of young people during their lives, meaningful demographic losses....
