United in Tefillah
These are trying times, to be sure. Without trying very hard, the Orthodox world finds itself united in the way it deals with its heavy hearts and foreboding thoughts. People are all doing the...
Strafing or Sanctions?
There isn’t a sane person on the planet—at least if evil counts as insanity—who doesn’t wish for Iran to be forced to abandon its nuclear ambitions (or to have them vaporized by one or...
Chumrah Done Wrong
She’s no Deborah Feldman. That makes her story so much more valuable to us. Writing in Tablet, the literary cynosure of every young Jewish iconoclast these days, Avital Chizhik lets us know that she...
Agudath Israel Statement on Toulouse Attack
The murderous attack on the Ozar Hatorah school in Toulouse, France this morning is a tragedy that rightly tears the hearts of Jews and people of good will everywhere. More than a tragedy, though,...
A Valuable Tool For the Seder
“Guided spontaneity” might be a good description for the Seder night. What we usually recite as the first part of Hallel becomes “shirah” at the annual revisiting of the birth of our people. The...
Purim in Contemporary Guise
“Since 1945, I was not as afraid as I am now. I am afraid because anti-Semitism, which I had thought belonged to the past, has somehow survived,” Eli Wiesel intones at the beginning of...
Trembling Before Rashi – Redux
By Shaul Gold [Editors’ note: We received a large volume of comments, which were held up in the queue until Rabbi Gold could pen a response to their general drift. We have still not...
Meat and Murder
I have an abiding appreciation of animals. My family has shared living space at one point or another over the years with: a small goat, a large iguana, a beautiful tarantula, an assortment of...
Purim and Polarization
Young Writers Submission by Daniel Weiss One of the claims that Haman leveled against the Jews was that they were “separate and scattered,” that they lacked togetherness. Of all the negative characteristics he could...
The Gorilla’s Lesson
The little boy was petrified, as one might imagine, by the gorilla who sat down next to him at the table in his (the child’s) home. I hadn’t meant to scare the kid; I...