The Need for RFRA
While Rabbi Shafran outlined so well the failure to protect religious freedom from the gay marriage agenda, the headlines are piling up fast and furious to show us why legislation to protect our rights...
Baltimore Take-Aways
Here in Baltimore, we’re buckling down the hatches and hoping to weather the storm. Unrest is expected in “the Northwest” but no one is quite sure what that means. Schools all dismissed early and...
From the Mother of the Meah Shearim Attack Victim
[Sometimes it is good to hear what it feels like from the people closest to the event. Thanks to Dr Moshe Shoshan for the translation.] It has been a stormy Shabbat for us as...
I, You, and He/She: A Conjugation Lesson
The real losers in the recent Israeli election — in addition to anti-Netanyahu Obama and Herzog— were the Israeli pollsters. The pre-election polls several days before the election (Israeli law wisely does not permit...
Tikvah Institute For Yeshiva Men – Second Season
We are excited to announce that applications are now being accepted for this summer’s Tikvah Institute for Yeshiva Men. Buoyed by a dream last year, we launched a program aimed at some of the...
Shooting From The Heart
Although blacks constitute approximately 13% of the American population, the FBI reported in 2013 that 38.5% of people arrested for violent crimes were African-Americans. Statistics like that one, coupled with a largely unsavory urban...
Reflections of a Non-Talmid
It was not the small number of personal interactions with Rav Aharon Lichtenstein zt”l that made the greatest impression upon me. To be sure, I could detect greatness, humility, lomdus. But I wasn’t around...
Kavah M’or Eineinu
by Yitzchak Etshalom The light of our eyes has been extinguished. This was the anguished phrase that kept repeating in my head all morning, since waking to the awful tidings of the untimely passing...
Rav Aharon Lichtenstein zt”l
By Hillel Goldberg Last Monday morning at the close of davening I received a call from my son, in tears, who told me that Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein had passed away. I told my son...
Happy Birthday to a Great Country: Haaretz vs. the Meshech Chochmah
I still don’t understand why my friends at the Israeli Consulate in Los Angeles urged me some time ago to attend a small reception for Avi Shavit and his then-current book, My Promised Land....