Poetry For a Yahrzeit
This Shabbos will mark the first yahrzeit of an extraordinary shaper and builder of the Los Angeles Torah community, Rebbetzin Dr. Miriam Huttler. After a childhood in Beis Zhvil of Meah Shearim, she braved...
Letter to the Editor of the NY Jewish Week
Below is the text of a self-explanatory letter to the editor of the New York Jewish Week; it is published in this week’s issue of that paper. December 21, 2013 Editor: Rori Picker Neiss...
Subjective Morality and Its Discontents
For the want of a single word – like the nail of the horse’s shoe – kingdoms can be lost. Israel’s enemies look towards the French version of UN Security Council 242 for the...
What Were They Thinking?
The Jewish Telegraphic Agency, whose dispatches are widely reproduced both here in the United States and abroad, reported today on British Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis having become the first sitting British chief rabbi to...
The Fact of the Matter
Several weeks ago, my wife and I had the pleasure of visiting Detroit (well, Oak Park, a suburb, and a solvent one), where two of our daughters and their husbands and their children live....
Opening a Dialogue
When the Rosh Yeshiva of Ner Yisrael, Rav Aharon Feldman shlit”a, called to offer me a review copy of the journal Dialogue, there could only be one answer, of course. But having read it,...
Rabbi Bleich’s New Book, and the Growth of Orthodox Non-Orthodoxy
When I thanked Rabbi Dovid Bleich for the gift of his just-released new book, he remarked, “You’ve probably read everything in it already.” While his intent was self-deprecating, it was really a testimony to...
American Paranoia
A strong paranoid streak has been embedded in the American psyche from nearly the first arrival of Europeans on these shores. We need only think of the Salem Witch Trials and much else that...
Too Little Information
At the Sheva Brachos festivities this past summer for the marriage of our youngest daughter, my wife and I heard many wonderful things about our newest son-in-law. Friends and relatives spoke about his impressive...
Daf Yomi For Kids
It may be the ultimate father-son male bonding tool. Think of it as tossing around a glatt kosher football, but first having to make a brachah on the activity. Daf Yomi 4Kids allows children...