The Third Way
There are three distinct ways to look at school vouchers. One is to regard them as a bogeyman threatening to destroy the American public educational system and undermine the sublime values that system instills...
Alternatives to Triumphalism
The American Jewish Committee’s 2007 Annual Survey of American Jewish Opinion is out, and it reflects once again the growing importance of the Orthodox community. Some will celebrate with high-fives and I-told-you-so’s. This would...
Teaching Truth
Two familiar stories: “The Boy Who Cried Wolf,” and “George Washington and the Cherry Tree.” For argument’s sake, let’s take George Washington’s name out of the second story, because he’s so famous. In the...
Bans are not Chinuch
I suspect that some Mishpacha readers are beginning wonder whether the magazine has developed an obsession with at-risk youth ever since the well-publicized tour of chareidi MKs of the teen hangouts around Jerusalem’s Ben-Yehudah...
Odds and Ends
Alighting from the Staten Island ferry at Manhattan’s southern tip on my way to work February 5, I was greeted by a phalanx of stern-looking police, padded with Kevlar and armed with assault rifles....
Two on Rebbetzin Farbstein’s Hidden in Thunder
Rebbetzin Esther Farbstein is a great woman in many ways. She is not only one of the chareidi world’s leading public intellectuals, but also a model of refined middos. Michlala Seminary of Jerusalem sponsored...
Learning From The Daniel Pearl Standard
My friend Judea Pearl’s writing is frequently moving, and always incisive. On the yahrzeit of his son, Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl, HY”D, brutally slain in Pakistan six years ago, Dr. Pearl creates...
Tackling The Elephant
Mere days before I was privileged to participate in a Washington, D.C. symposium on religious freedom in Israel, the Malaysian government threatened to withhold a Catholic newspaper’s publishing permit, to punish it for having...
Dallas – Success With a Flourish
If buildings could speak, the message of Dallas’ new Ohr HaTorah shul is one of pride, confidence, and inclusiveness. Simply put, it is – architecturally – the most impressive building of a right-of-Orthodox-center shul...
Returns Welcome
Married mere days, David found himself seated at the head of a table with his new wife, in-laws and a host of strangers, including some rabbis with long beards. He wasn’t nervous around rabbis;...