Shofar in Auschwitz – Did Take Place!
If you have a chance to buy this week’s Rosh Hashanah issue of AMI Magazine, you will find my summary of research that was set in motion eight years ago due to some caustic...
Good Teshuva Throw-Away Line
My annual Rosh Hashanah shiur is now available for download A bit of review of important themes in the machshavah of Rosh Hashanah. A few new themes developed (Malchus Hashem; why we have festive...
Redeeming Modern Orthodoxy
The patient is hemorrhaging. In fact, the patient does not seem to even know who he is. It sounds pretty dire. The patient is Modern Orthodoxy, and it in silent crisis mode, as it...
Anatomy of a Chumra Society
I owe a large debt of gratitude to Rabbi Karlinsky. The Karlinskys were my Shadchanim some twenty years ago, and it has worked out most satisfactorily. Consider that full disclosure preceding my unvarnished praise...
Can Chumros Be Bad For Your Neshamah?
by Rabbi Shaya Karlinsky In his recent post on the “disappearing woman”, Rabbi Adlerstein highlighted two important points in the discussion that have ramifications well beyond the specific topic of eliminating pictures of the...
Govrov Selichos, 1939
This time of year in 1939, in a Polish town called Ruzhan, a 14-year-old boy had his plans rudely interrupted. The boy, who, fifteen years later, would become my father, had made preparations to...
Opinions Gone Wild
I’m greatly pained by much of the reaction in the Orthodox community to what has come to be called the Iran Deal. To be sure, there are elements of the agreement that are less...
Protesting in Support of International Beit Din
Do you agree with Rabbi Goldin when he says: “This isn’t a democracy, it’s a halachic process… The power to make decisions has always been in the hands of the few who spend their...
Atticus and the Yomim Nora’im
The American 1960 classic “To Kill a Mockingbird” was in the news this summer, the result of the publication of an earlier version of it, a sequel in reality, that its author, Harper Lee,...
Ultra-Orthodox Ministers Are Some of Israel’s Best
That’s not my headline, it belongs to Ha’aretz. Yes, really! Ha’aretz columnist Gideon Levy is a member of the hard left — his most recent book is entitled The Punishment of Gaza. But in...