Zionist No Longer
For a secular American Zionist organization to point to a Rabbi’s ties to organizations it deems “extremist” is nothing new. What makes this particular critique newsworthy is that the Rabbi in question is the...
Religion Increases Well-Being
A friend of mine received a call the other night for a telephone survey of senior citizens. The interviewer wanted to know about his physical and emotional health – “Do you have any trouble...
Jewish Students Under Assault — Part U
Jewish college students find themselves increasingly under attack on campuses around the world. The seventh annual Israel Apartheid Week just took place on 55 campuses world-wide. Canada’s Immigration Minister Jason Kenney rightly described such...
Ohr Ve-choshech Mishtamshim Be-irvuvia
It always takes courage and moral backbone to publicly apologize, and we should acknowledge this in Richard Goldstone, who has recanted much of what he wrote in the notorious Goldstone Report. Like the feathers...
Home is Where the Judaism Is
by Rabbi Naphtali Hoff The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism (USCJ) recently released a draft of a strategic plan that speaks to the ongoing challenge facing non-Orthodox Jews in this country. The release was...
What Would You Do? – The Israeli Version
One short, pithy description of the difference between Islamist and Israeli societies has been placed in the mouths of many speakers. One version is attributed to Hezbolah’s Nasrallah. In an interview after a prisoner...
“I Stand Tonight With Israel”
Glenn Beck gets it right… again. On George Soros, on the Arab countries that make up the vast majority of the Middle East, and on Israel. The quote above is at 20:50 and ends...
Ice Storm Insight
Most of us have paused at the fact that, at least from our limited perspective, Hashem seems to present two very different “faces”: on the one hand, He is the Merciful Lifegiver, the Forgiver of sin and Bestower of blessings; on the other, the Lawgiver.
Better Than Esperanto
Walking back from mincha at the White Shul, we passed blocks of stalled cars on Empire Boulevard, most of which were delivery vehicles for mashloach manos shepherded by harried drivers. There is just no...
Mindless Purity
Mama Jean, I realized, had sensed what the rabbis of the Talmud teach: that a person’s true character is evident in “his cup”—in how he acts when intoxicated. She had perceived Klal Yisrael.