Who Deserves to be Our Hero?
You find yourself standing in a vast convention hall, larger than any you’ve seen before. A cacophony of different languages and dialects pounds at your eardrums, but the sounds are all happy sounds. Multiply...
Cross-Currents Blog
The case for Israel’s moon mission — from a Torah perspective
In my view, space exploration is Torah. There’s no disconnection between the two disciplines. In fact, Torah and the world around it — including worlds outside our own planet — operate in complete symbiosis.
Agudath Israel on the Measles Outbreak and Reaction to It
Agudath Israel of America is deeply concerned about the recent outbreak of measles and the threat it poses to communities around the country. For that reason, countless rabbinical figures and leaders, including leading rabbis...
Yeshivat Chovevei Torah and the Ordination of Openly Gay Men – Very Mixed Messages
News broke last week that Yeshivat Chovevei Torah (YCT) refused to ordain an openly gay student. The student, Daniel, declared himself gay late into his first year of YCT’s four-year program. Unfazed by Daniel’s...
Blessed Bang for the Buck
Across an ocean but hot on the heels of Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s not-so-subtle invoking of the hoary stereotype of Jews’ wily wielding of wealth – “It’s all about the Benjamins,” she contended, referring to...
Be Careful of Who You are Stereotyping
I’m sharing a letter of mine that Mishpacha published in the current issue. Here is the letter – with minor cosmetic changes to make it even clearer. My letter reacted to a single vignette...
The Essence of Israel
When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu got into a dustup with a television personality and a movie star, many of us felt reasonably secure assuming which side was likely more Jewishly authentic. And since...
The Measles Outbreak – A Chillul Hashem on Multiple Levels
My maternal grandfather, who was a prominent pediatrician, internist and radiologist, used to say that “Judaism is the Cadillac of religions.” Although my grandfather’s formal Torah education pretty much ended at his bar mitzvah,...
Time for the Herd to Stampede: Measles Outbreak in Detroit
I’m in Detroit, unhappily a not-uninvolved participant in what is going on around me. The situation is somewhere between precaution and panic, the latter averted only because of strong, deliberate action by community rabbonim,...
After New Zealand: How Stereotypes Will Prevent A New Alliance
Every bullet fired at the mosque had at least three names on it: Muslim, Jew, Black. The dark, foreboding world of the far-right, replete with its own vocabulary, video games, and revisionist history, is...
