Gimme That Really Old Time Religion
What happens when you mix the flair of a Southern Baptist preacher with a bit of Torah enlightenment? Watch. [Thanks to Dr. Shmuel Lebovics, Los Angeles]
Conversion Standards, Hockey Bats, and the Academic Approach to Halacha
Where do we set the bar of observance for would-be converts? The row over standards waxes and wanes, but never quite disappears. A recent article in Tradition did not make the waves it should...
My (non-deductible) contribution
An e-mail arrived today from the president of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency appealing for money to enable the agency to stay afloat. I must admit that as a free subscriber to JTA’s daily news...
Reacting to the US Holocaust Museum Attack
There is no gainsaying the beauty and appropriateness of Rabbi Chaim Dovid Zweibel’s letter to the son of Stephen Tyrone Johns. It demonstrates both the chochmah and lev of talmidei chachamim. There is also...
Calling Evil by Its Name
Upon his first visit to one of the liberated death camps, Allied Supreme Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower said, “There are those who ask what are we fighting for. Let them come here and...
Heart and Soul
Electroencephalographs measure electrical activity in the brain but nothing more. Who can possibly know what might be happening in the soul of a living human being?
Houston, We’ve Got A Problem!
by Rabbi Dovid Landesman I hate to always be the harbinger of discomforting tidings, but the older I get, the more pessimistic I become. Instead of being proud of the unprecedented growth of the...
The G-d Lover Within Us
by Rabbi Doron Beckerman In a previous post, I alluded to the fact that the current implementation of Kollel has “significant drawbacks”. Not being the focus of that essay, it seems that that that...
Why Torah Trumps the US Constitution
Obvious, you say. Perhaps to us. But these are the words of Justice Antonin Scalia, in a dissent from the Court ruling on the legal need for a judge to recuse himself from a...
Change Yourself; Change the World
Sometimes one hears a story that does not, at first, seem so remarkable, but the more one reflects upon it, the more lessons one discovers. A rosh yeshiva recently told me about an avreich...