Racism, Real and Perceived
We don’t have any racists in our community, right? Of course we do. And, as the political climate changes in the US, we’re going to pay a higher price for whatever racism does exist....
Disinformation Please
The ad accuses President Trump of having paid a $2 million bribe to a Vermont prosecutor for the latter to fabricate a larceny charge against Senator Bernie Sanders. Despite the president’s vociferous objection to...
Discount to Readers
This is an exercise in unvarnished self-promotion. I don’t like doing it, but marketing is part of the deal with the publisher. My second volume on the Slonimer Rebbe’s zt”l Nesivos Shalom has just...
TheTorah.com: It Is Most Certainly Not “Orthodox Jews Challenging Commonly Held Beliefs About the Torah”
In what is surely for many readers an eye-opening article, entitled It Ain’t Necessarily So: These Orthodox Jews Are Challenging Commonly Held Beliefs About the Torah, Haaretz’ Judy Maltz takes a close look at the...
Amino Acids and Us
Like many 60-somethings, I remember being informed in grade school of the imminent solution to the mystery of life. Triumphantly, teachers described an experiment conducted by two researchers, Stanley Miller and Harold Urey, in...
The New Nishma Surveys – Wow and Whoa! (Plus an Endnote on Israeli Modern Orthodoxy)
Although the Orthodox community is the quickest growing and most Jewishly engaged segment of our people, the volume of data on Orthodox communal norms is probably the sparsest. Thanks to Nishma Research, this is...
The Nazis Knew
A dear friend who had a secular upbringing and maintains an irreligious outlook took issue, gently, if a bit cynically, with something I had written for Aish.com, a website that reaches out to a...
No Escape
“We used to spend a good two hours here… chaos,” Palestinian construction worker Imad Khalil explained to National Public Radio’s Daniel Estrin. “Today we arrive and we immediately pass.” The worker was marveling at...
A Game-Changing Yom Kippur Sermon
Remarkable and courageous are the first words that come to mind in describing a recent Yom Kippur sermon at a tony Manhattan Conservative synagogue. The sermon did not dwell on what others have, in...
A Lesson About Love
I used to pass the fellow each morning years ago as I walked up Broadway in lower Manhattan on my way to work. He would stand at the same spot and hold aloft, for...