There are no basketball courts in Heaven
I don’t know what to do. Should I copy author Dovid Landesman’s joke at the beginning of the chapter entitled, “The Cowboy and the Beemer”? You’d laugh your heads off (I know, I’ve already...
Window to a Different Spirit
As a confirmed addict of anything written by the Bleichs, the first piece I looked at in the new issue of Jewish Action was Dr. Judy Bleich’s review of Ish Yehudi, the biography of...
The Gym is Only a Metaphor
Returning from a successful run on the treadmill last week, I contemplated how much better I felt than when I dragged myself to the gym, after an early morning minyan. The most obvious reason...
What’s With The Fours?
Despite the late hour and exhaustion (not to mention wine), many a Jewish mind has wondered long and hard during a Passover Seder about all the Haggadah’s “fours.” Four questions, four sons, four expressions...
Early winner of Pesach sillyness award
I had the privilege of travelling around Israel with my daughter last week. We stopped at a museum shop which sells, among other things, Dead Sea creams and lotions. As we entered, I noticed...
Not Fear But Fealty
The Torah itself establishes Judaism as a deeply role-based faith. There is a role for a Cohein, a role for a Levi, roles for men and roles for women
Agudath Israel Commends RCA Leaders
Upon consultation with its rabbinic leadership, Agudath Israel of America issued the following statement today: Hamodia reports that Rabbi Shmuel Goldin, First Vice-President of the Rabbinical Council of America, has clarified that the RCA...
The RCA and Rabbi Avi Weiss
Upon consultation with its rabbinic leadership, Agudath Israel of America issued the following statement today: The leadership of the Rabbinical Council of America and Rabbi Avi Weiss have apparently reached agreement that Rabbi Weiss...
The Achish Melech Gat Awards
by Dovid Landesman I have often speculated to myself whether cynicism, of which I have been blessed with an inordinate amount, is in any way an exemplary or positive middah and I should thus...
A Holocaust Story of a Different Sort
“Yesterday,” he said, “someone came from Parabek, and told us ‘Simcha umar,’ that Simcha had died. And so I volunteered to bury you.”