Listening to Multiple Voices
Much of the recent thrusting and parrying regarding Shmitah in these pages has brought home once again the importance of listening to other voices, especially the ones with which you do not agree. Two...
Senator, You’re No Jonathan Edwards
Ought parents provide clear moral guidance and a set of definite values to their children, by orchestrating what they are exposed to and what not? John Edwards doesen’t think so. At the Dartmouth presidential...
Stupid, Yes, But is it Anti-Semitic? Part 1
The most frightening thing about The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy is how bad, shockingly bad, it is. That two professors at two of the world’s leading universities could have produced a book...
It’s Not What the Neighbours Say
“The plural of anecdotes is not data” goes an old saying. Yet when one attempts to examine a wide variety of social phenomenon in the Israel Torah community, hard data is hard to come...
An Appeal To Those Leaving Kollel
Aha! Now that I’ve got your attention, I can tell the truth: this post is about the closing of the New York Kollel, an adult education program housed in and partially supported by Reform’s...
An Anguished Question
Israeli media are reporting that there was another incident of violence against a woman for refusing to move to the back of the bus. I have no way of knowing whether the story is...
Yom Kippur Heroes
This past Yom Kippur Israeli security forces averted a major disaster when they uncovered a fully prepared explosive belt in the heart of Tel Aviv at the last moment. The drama worthy of a...
Arafat’s Posthumous Victory
Something about the scene struck me as completely incongruous. The members of the second Am Echad delegation – a group of concerned American Jews representing a wide spectrum of American Orthodoxy – were gathered...
What the snake knew
The woman said to the Serpent, . . . “Of the fruit of the tree which is in the center of the garden, G-d has said: ‘You shall neither eat of it nor touch...