Why the Happy Face?
In the spirit of the Three Weeks, during which we minimize our feelings of happiness, I’d like ask a few questions about the Iranian nuclear threat. It is widely assumed in Israel that some...
Bargain Hunting
For a chance of pace, I thought I’d provide some shopping tips for after the Three Weeks. I’m convinced the marketplace is filled with great bargains, and I’d like to help others find them....
The Other Giveaway
Israel’s trading of terrorists for the remains of two murdered soldiers caused so much pain and consternation, that another giveaway went by unnoticed at exactly the same time. At the Madrid Interfaith Conference, Rabbi...
The Jewish Week’s “Haredi Problem”
In a recent column, “Haredim: Underdogs or All-Powerful?”, the New York Jewish Week’s editor, Gary Rosenblatt, writes of a complaint he received from a reader, Chaim, about the paper’s coverage of, and commentary on,...
Think Green
Plastic does not degenerate and is difficult to recycle. Given worlds enough and time, the planet will eventually be overrun by plastic. Is worrying about such matters an indication of a mind addled by...
Obama: Still Not Ready for Prime Time
On the eve of Senator Barack Obama’s visit last week to Israel, Yossi Klein Halevi penned a gem of an essay in The New Republic in the form of an open letter to the...
Spiritual Fast Food
Were it not so sad, the image of the pop singer teaching Kabbala to the Yankee third baseman could be a comic invention – the once-impregnable fortress of Kabbala overrun by fools and miscreants. The unkindest cut of all is that the headlines link Kabbala with two individuals who are not even Jewish and certainly have no Judaic learning whatsoever, who cannot read or understand a Hebrew word, who cannot even pronounce the word “Kabbala” correctly, who know nothing of its provenance, and whose closest encounter with things Jewish is the corner deli.
Think Again: Whatever happened to the future?
“It is frantic, disorganized, exceptionally neurotic, but somehow the necessary things get done – a metaphor for all of Israeli life.” So Martin Sieff describes Israel’s UN mission, in a Jerusalem Report review of...
What do BTs have to do to be accepted?
In all the articles and comments about whether Ba’alei Teshuva are fully accepted in Frum from Birth communities, one major factor I haven’t seen mentioned is the character of the individual BT. This applies...
See No Evil
Forget four-dollar-a-gallon gas, the sundry financial crises, and the various looming threats posed by Russia, China, et al. One issue alone – the prospect of a nuclear-armed, apocalyptic Iran – dwarfs all else at...