Finding universal themes in the Creation story should hardly be surprising. We can rattle off the obvious ones without straining. The Creation of Man as a single individual underscores the importance of the individual,...
There is something ugly about protesting Kapparos in particular. A huge “hats off” to Kalman Groner for helping set the record straight — calmly, clearly, and as filmed by the protesters themselves.
Sukkos – for many, it’s summer’s last hurrah. Being outdoors, hopefully in green, lush and warm (or not too cold) surroundings. A pleasant return to nature before autumn really kicks in. A great time...
Have you ever wondered why, in light of the slew of “I survived Orthodoxy but saw the secular light!” essays and books, there no counter-flood of similar writing by some of the many who...
There are more pleasant things to contemplate than an 11:30PM visit by the police department on the first night of Sukkos. This one, however, rewrote the script – and added to our Yom Tov....
Michelangelo lived at a time when the Catholic Church was increasing its oppression of Jews — but his painting of the Sistine Chapel is almost entirely drawn from the Jewish Bible, emphasizing the connection between the Church and the Jewish nation. And then there’s Aminadab.
Each year, sitting in the sukkah on the first night of Sukkos, with my wife and whoever among our children and grandchildren we are fortunate to have with us for Yom Tov, I feel...
As I posted a few weeks ago, decisions about the proper adjudication of agunah cases need to be left to the highest echelon of halachic authorities and cannot be subject to popular petition and protest. Nevertheless,...
At several times in the last decades, people posed questions about the propriety of making references to Yerushalayim as a ruin, as if it still showed the signs of the devastation left by the...
The Rambam’s logic, as always, is unassailable. Miracles, he informs us (Hilchos Yesodei HaTorah, 8:1), simply cannot be bases of belief. What appears to us as miraculous, he explains, could always be trickery or...
