Facebook Is No Friend
If Mark Zuckerberg tries to friend me, I will decline. Nothing personal. His vision just doesn’t resonate with me, so why let him into my social network? Zuckerberg, in case your cave isn’t wired,...
Grime and Grandeur
After a moment’s walk, though, one is transported suddenly into another world, one of astounding power and beauty.
WikiLeaks and Anti-Semitism
WikiLeaks continues to be a big story more than two weeks after the latest batch of State Department documents were released. What has so far been poorly understood, however, are the motivations of WikiLeaks...
Judge Everyone Favorably, Reprise
Does everyone favor their own, except the Jews? It is we who have a Mitzvah to love our fellows like ourselves, and to judge every other Jew favorably, as we would like ourselves to...
Our Not-So-Humble Opinions
So often we seem to feel a need to embrace absolute, take-no-prisoners political opinions; to reject any possibility of ambivalence, much less any admission of ignorance.
How To Respond to the Renting Ban – And How To Fail At It
Many responded to the psak of a group of rabbis in Israel (including a few impressive names) that it was forbidden to rent to Arabs. A small handfu of these responsesl were adequate. Most...
How to Say “No” to the Non-Orthodox
Dr David Luchins spoke in LA today. Always a captivating speaker, the piece de resistance of his presentation was a fascinating Torah thought from R Ahron Soloveichik zt”l on how to relate to non-observant...
Romanticizing Intolerance
Many of you who are known to support Israel likely received the same link through a well-meaning friend’s email, pointing to a YouTube that you had to see to believe. Finally, someone with the...
The Past in the Present
“I [had] promised [myself] that I would go to Bialystok and something was telling me – maybe it was because I was stubborn — I said I am going to yeshiva and I’m going to go.”
A Cautionary Tale
The headline says it all: “Court orders Orthodox woman to be cremated after three-month battle.” Ethel Baar, who died on September 11, began following Orthodox Judaism late in life, and her great-nephew James Pollak...