A Note to Readers
Dear Cross-Currents Reader, In lieu of offering an essay this Friday, I’d like to take the opportunity now to let you know about some changes that will be taking place in the origin and...
I Thought the Greeks Lost
by Dovid Landesman For many years, the Torah Umesorah Annual Dinner was scheduled for the week of Chanukah. One year, R. Gedaliah Schorr zt’l, rosh yeshiva of Torah Vodaat, and at the time, the...
Kupat Ha’ir’s Over The Top Advertising
The report you heard is true, according to multiple, reliable local sources with whom I checked. The Lakewood mashgiah Rav Mattisyahu Solomon, shlit”a, did term some of the solicitation techniques of Kupat Ha’ir as...
Taking a Shyne to Judaism
The Jerusalem Post (from which this title was lifted) and the NY Times both published stories this week about the hip-hop artist “Shyne,” born Jamal Michael Barrow, and who now goes by the name...
Punishing People for Their Beliefs
Merely “brain-dead” human beings, in the judgment of major halachic decisors, are still alive.
Frum Irish Eyes, Still Smiling
A few weeks ago, we posted a short piece on the remarkable career of Rabbi Theodore Lewis z”l. Rabbi Akiva Males of Harrisburg, PA pointed us to a later story with an anecdote too...
Younger Jewish leaders not so worried about intermarriage
This headline is taken from the JTA, discussing the latest research paper from the Avi Chai Foundation: Jewish leaders younger than 40 aren’t as bent out of shape about intermarriage as their older colleagues....
Women and Talmud Study
by Rabbi Heshy Grossman [Editors’ Note: As a follow-up to a recent discussion, Rabbi Grossman sent us this article, which presents the oft-misunderstood theoretical framework underlying the traditional Orthodox perspective on women and Talmud...
The Importance of Voting
As Rabbi Chaim Dovid Zwiebel put it in an email: The simple reality is that government officials look at which groups vote, and take their positions on the major issues of the day accordingly....