Kerry, Halachic Israel, and Safety
By Rabbi Yair Hoffman for 5TJT.com In the past few months, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has occupied entire floors of hotels in Jerusalem. In early March, Mr Kerry is expected to...
Stopping the Madness
By Rabbi Yair Hoffman for 5tjt.com Let’s picture the true story of a wonderful Bais Yaakov girl in high school. She has friends, she loves her Torah classes. She does well in Limudei Chol....
Unpublished Heroes
I think it’s time I came clean regarding my doubts about Judaism, about everything I was taught by my parents and rabbaim in yeshiva. How can we be sure that the Torah was really...
Rav Schachter’s Bright-Line Rule On Halachic Innovation
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...
Vive la Différence
When MK David Rotem, of the Yisrael Beytenu party, said that the Reform movement is “another Jewish religion,” and then added that the Charedim [which Times of Israel translates as “ultra-Orthodox,” but I have...
Moonlighting in Halacha
for 5tjt.com This past week a terrible tragedy occurred in Scotland regarding a medical doctor. It seems a doctor who was moonlighting did not inform his hospital that he was working another job. On...
Phyllis Chesler Supports W4W?
Women For the Wall seems to have caught a leading member of WOW being too honest once again. Phyllis Chesler was a founder of WOW and now is part of the “Original WOW” that...
Tempest in a Tefillin-Bag?
Of the slew of recent articles celebrating the idea of girls wearing tefillin two were particularly notable. One, because of how revealing it is of its author’s attitude toward halacha; the second, because it...
Unravelling Tefillin-gate
(The subject of this article has been well covered by other writers in this space, and I apologize if posting it here is the equivalent of a fifth wheel on a cart. But I...
Annulling a Marriage – An Overview
By Rabbi Yair Hoffman for 5tjt.com Poor moral choices can be made by people of either gender, especially when it comes to behaviors involving divorce. Divorces can bring out the worst in people, and...