The comments on my previous post on this subject make a number of useful points.  In the aggregate, however, they do not deal with what I am getting at, namely that the gay rights...

[The clip has been removed from YouTube. Kudos to all those responsible, which includes those who realized how toxic the message was, and how counterproductive it was to the stated objectives of the atzeret...

[YA – Dr. Finkelman submitted a long comment that can best be handled by turning it into a post, with my bracketed reactions to him embedded.] A handful of initial responses. As for social...

Chevra – Let’s try to address your concerns serially. The phenomenal growth of the Orthodox community hardly touches the issue of the korbanos we lost to the heterodox movements. While Orthodoxy grew, that growth...

By Chaim Saiman and Yoel Finkelman [Editor’s Note: Publishing what follows may seem out of character for Cross-Currents. While it does not violate our editorial policy, it does challenge what has become a theme...

The Times Book Review of this past Sunday has a terrific piece by Fareed Zakaria on George F. Kennan’s diaries.  In 1994, when Kennan was ninety, he noted America’s “pathological preoccupation with sex and...

by Bracha Goetz It was almost time for Shabbos. There were a number of things I still needed to do, but it was hard for me to stop reading the stories that were just...

by Avrohom Gordimer When challenging a world-eminent halachic master, be prepared. Nice try, but… These thoughts immediately came to mind upon reading the response of R. Ysoscher Katz chair of the Department of Talmud...

By the time you read this, the new issue of Tradition may already have launched a thousand conversations. It contains an important article by Rabbis Aryeh and Dov Frimer that prohibits “partnership minyanim.” At...