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....
Hormonal Judaism
There is good kiruv and there is bad kiruv. After reading ‘You’ve been Aish’d…’ in the Jerusalem Post, even the bad kiruv starts to look better. It is a piece that alternates between silliness...
Think Again: The devolving value of life
About one thing Aharon Barak is right: Constitutionalism – the imposition by judges of their moral intuitions on an unsuspecting public – is on the rise everywhere. The opinion of Justice Anthony Kennedy of...
A World Going Ape
It’s easy to snickeringly dismiss the recent disclosure that the late hotelier Leona Helmsley not only left $12 million to her dog but nearly all of the rest of her estate – an estimated...
R. Michoel Ber Weissmandl on Honesty and the Holocaust
A reader submitted the following brief piece, which may or may not be relevant to the ongoing controversy about the derech of R. Shamshon Raphael Hirsch. It is offered here without comment or elaboration,...
His Battle is Our Battle
Chaim Shmuel Golubchuk, a”h, has gone to his eternal reward. But the issues that pitted his children Percy Golubchuk and Miriam Geller against Grace General Hospital in Winnipeg over the last seven months will...
The Post that Wasn’t
When I wrote two weeks ago that I was “back,” and hoped to resume posting more frequently, I also wrote that I planned a post on “Michael Bloomberg, Barack Obama, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance...