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...
How to reply when the doorbell rings
Many years ago, while a rabbi in Atlanta, I answered a knock on my door one Shabbat afternoon. Standing in front of me was a fine-looking couple – obviously non-Jewish. “Shabbat Shalom, rabbi,” they...
How Jews Should Vote
Yes, Varda, there is a Jewish way to vote – or at least a genuine Jewish perspective to bring to political races like the current one for the American presidency. Some Jews would assert...
The Hidden Tragedy of the Hostage Exchange
Of all the many bizarre elements of hostage exchange approved this week by the Israeli cabinet by a vote of 22-3, the most bizarre was that Israel negotiated as if did not matter whether...
Two on Rav Hirsch, zt”l
The two pieces that follow deal, respectively, with the relevance of Rav Shamshon Raphael Hirsch for the relationship of Torah Jews to their fellow Jews and with what he still offers to Torah Jews...