by Rabbi Avi Shafran Quite a stir ensued at a recent American Jewish Committee symposium in Washington when Israeli novelist A.B.Yehoshua called the hosting organization’s 100-year record “a great failure” and opined that Jews...
Two days ago, the NY Times had an article about a man freed by DNA testing, after being convicted and serving ten years in jail for murder. This, despite the fact that prosecutors insisted...
Several readers, who are not Jewish Observer subscribers, wanted to read the article on Metzitzah B’Peh by R’ Chaim Dovid Zweibel to which Jonathan Rosenblum referred earlier today. It is enclosed herein, and explains...
A funny thing happened on the way to the millennium. Nomenclature that was once limited to the Orthodox and dismissed as being parochial has gradually become de rigueur among non-Orthodox groups. One now finds...
What is the most effective form of advocacy for the Torah community to adopt vis-à-vis governmental authorities? Is it behind the scenes advocacy or public confrontation? The answer, as Rabbi Elazar Menachem Schach once...
I’m currently translating Rabbi Shlomo Lorincz’s memoirs. He relates that in the early ’50s there was a group called Bris Kena’im, which would note the numbers of cars travelling through religious neighborhoods on Shabbos,...
Remember the fabulous finned phenomenon of a few years past? A fish which began conversing with a worker in a store in a Jewish enclave near Monsey, and which, upon further interrogation, was found...
The JPost reports that Atef Adwan, Hamas’ refugee minister, met with Rabbi Moishe Arye Friedman of Vienna today in Sweden. The Israelis, and most of the civilized world, criticized Sweden for letting terrorist representatives...
I just had a chance to catch up on the strings discussing the pre-Pesach protests/demonstrations/riots in Boro Park and Meah Shearim. The latter were triggered by the arrest of a nineteen-year father belonging to...
The first Yahrtzeit of my nephew, Aaron Elimelech ben Ben-Tzion Eliezer a”h, Aaron Rosenfeld, is quickly approaching. His parents, Elie and Debbie, have created a Memorial Fund with Chai Lifeline. The fund’s inauguration will...
