JJ Goldberg Gets It Right
It’s not often that I agree with anything from the Forward’s JJ Goldberg. This quote, though, clearly qualifies to be one of the exceptions: Looking at recent population figures in the world’s two largest...
“Ethicists” Without Ethics: The Collapse of the Moral High Ground
If you are disturbed by the rapid progress of the homosexual lobby – with even Pres. Obama favoring same-sex marriages – let me tell you: you ain’t heard nothin’ yet. A recent article in...
The Ten Commandments – The Sequel
Orthodox triumphalists love Dr. Jack Wertheimer, because he is the ultimate insider critic. A professor of American Jewish history at the Jewish Theological Seminary, he is so often devastating in no-holds-barred depiction of what...
The Write Stuff
Sometimes—usually after the New York Times deigns to publish a letter of mine on behalf of Agudath Israel of America—I’m asked how one “gets a letter” published in a (rightly or wrongly) respected periodical....
Walden Ponder
by Dovid Landesman Last week, my wife and I had the distinct pleasure of attending the induction ceremony of the Netzach Yehudah [a.k.a. Nachal Chareidi] brigade. Our youngest son is the brigade’s sergeant major...
The Meat of the Matter
A number of weeks ago, I became aware of an essay contest conceived by The New York Times Magazine’s resident “ethicist”—a columnist, that is, who entertains readers’ questions about moral or ethical quandaries they...
Yom HaShoah at Ft. Hood (Part Two)
[continues from an earlier piece] There is no easy way out of the quandary about presenting the Shoah to non-Jews, at least not if you have to pick a single approach. It is like...
Etiquette and Ethics
This year, the first day of Shavuos fell on a Sunday. Were there any Tzadukim and Baitusim still around today, they would have been happy. Because those rejecters of the mesorah contended that Shavuos...
Sinai and Jewish Unity
Of all the many sterling qualities of the chareidi community in Israel, I suspect no one would list public relations acumen near the top. And of the many public relations failures of the community...
Citifield: A Scorecard
No event on the scale of the recent Citifield asifa takes place without its enthusiasts and without its detractors, without some surrounding hype and without some cynical push-back. With the passage of time, it...