Who’s on first? I would score this as a victory for the team that batted second. It is thoroughly in good taste. It also, ironically, leaves no room for the genuine anti-charedi haters. It...
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...
It was gratifying to see that a recent essay of mine in the Forward stimulated thoughtful responses. I had made the case for jettisoning the time-honored (if, to me, less than honorable) term “ultra-Orthodox.”...
Reading the news of the “Million Man Atzeres,” that was the statement of our Sages that came to mind. “The ‘destruction’ of elders builds, [while] the ‘building’ of children destroys” [Megillah 31b]. The Yesh...
[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 Forward recently published an article of mine about the term “Ultra-Orthodox.” You can read it here . A response to it, by Professor Samuel Heilman, is here . And, finally, a rejoinder is...
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...