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...
Good Things Happen
Like so much in our world that seems genuine at first, the photograph that graced the front pages of some of the nation’s most respected newspapers earlier this month was in fact a fake....
“Turbulent times” – Zurich style
Last week found me speaking for the Jewish Boys School of Zurich on “Educating Children in Turbulent Times.” But as far as Zurich goes, these are not particularly turbulent times – at least not...
Dirty Harrys
Several decades ago, a senior official at the Conservative movement’s University of Judaism alerted the wider Los Angeles community by direct mailing to a new threat looming on the Jewish horizon. A growing number...
Horribly Wrong
Sometimes a word or set of words is just so jarring, so inappropriate or so cruel that it causes actual pain. Jewish religious law forbids such language to Jews as ono’at d’varim pain-causing words....