From Yom Yerushalayim to Meron
As a woman in a shiur I gave on Shabbos put it, Yom Yerushalayim, sadly, has become the exclusive province of the Dati Leumi community here in Israel. Secular Jews have lost interest; charedim...
Israeli Modern Orthodoxy and Female Clergy – Crossing the Line
The headline caught a huge amount of attention: In Israeli first, woman chosen as sole spiritual leader of Orthodox community. The article, and countless other versions of the same, reports that Rabbanit Shira Marili...
Two Paths to the Happy End of History
Between the lines of the terrible description in parshas Bechukosai of what will happen if Klal Yisrael abandons the mitzvos of Hashem lie subtle hints to the limits and end of those curses. The...
Parshas Emor – Embracing Our Worlds
A strange and strangely familiar phrase is found in Rashi, commenting on the Torah’s introduction of the account of the mekalel, the blasphemer, with “And he went out” (Vayikra, 24:10) Rashi, quoting Rabi Levi...
The Highly Educated Hate Us, Too – Maybe More Dangerously
For decades, more education was presumed to be the antidote to anti-Semitism. People with more years of education showed less hostility to Jews in survey after survey. Jews and their non-Jewish allies placed their...
Parshas Acharei Mos – Love Means No Matter What
My late dear friend Yossie Huttler, a”h, with whom I often studied Daf Yomi on our Staten Island ferry commute, once asked me a question about parshas Acharei Mos. Rashi, he pointed out, cites...
Parshas Tazria – Pity the Habitual Accuser
It’s bad enough that the person whose divisive sins caused him to contract tzora’as (a physical condition conferring tum’ah and sometimes mistakenly identified with leprosy) has to sit apart from society, but he is...
Parshas Shemini – And That Could Make All the Difference
Even those of us with limited exposure to farm animals can easily differentiate between a cow and a donkey. Which leads Rashi to explain that when the Torah refers to our need to differentiate...
The Karpas Conundrum
The essay below was originally published in The Jewish Observer in 1988. Questions, questions everywhere. At the Seder, that is. There are the proverbial Four, of course, but they lead to a torrent of...
Parshas Tzav – The Illness That Was Egypt
The korban todah, or “thanksgiving” offering described in the parsha (Vayikra 7:12), according to the Gemara (Brachos 54b), citing Tehillim 107, is the proper response to one of four categories of danger (though other...