Yaakov is Back, Too
While Eytan Kobre wasn’t referring to me when he wrote “Jack is Back” early last week, it would be true in any case. [Yaakov -> Jacob -> Jack. In my Yeshiva days it was...
The Missing Ethic
A reader asks why I haven’t seen fit to address ethical concerns raised by news reports about a kosher slaughterhouse/meatpacking concern in Postville, Iowa that was the subject of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement...
Jack Is Back
We didn’t stop him the last time around when his victim was Conservatism, as I had presciently recommended, and lo and behold, JTS’s Jack Wertheimer is back on the attack against the non-Orthodox, this...
The Conversion Progress Report
Several weeks into the current conversion fracas, and I have participated in a webcam debate, read two of Rabbi Sherman’s piskei din, plus teshuvos both modern and pre-modern, several articles in Techumin, a few...
The Road Taken
As summer unfolds, we behold and endure graduation ceremonies – the recognition of academic milestones, the bestowing of diplomas, the conferring of awards and the delivery, to excess, of commencement addresses. Having had the...
The Goal is Ahavas Torah
One of the defining characteristics of any community, and especially a Jewish community, is the provision of education to its young. R”Yehoshua ben Gamla instituted the first system of public education anywhere. But for...
The Good Guys Win
Last week a French appeals court handed down its long awaited decision in the libel action brought by France2 TV journalist Charles Enderlin and France2 against French media critic Phillipe Karsenty. Enderlin now joins...
Tears of Joy- Six Decades After Aushwitz
by Rabbi Elchonon Oberstein I have just come home from the wedding of Hershel and Esther Boehm’s daughter Rifky to Shuie Anisfeld. As at most frum weddings, there was a long wait for the...
From The Mouths of Ministers
“Tonight I humbly ask forgiveness of the Jewish people for every act of anti-Semitism and the deafening silence of Christianity in your greatest hour of need during the Holocaust.” Those words were spoken before...
Chareidim L’Kol Davar
In his column last week on the chareidi teenagers recently charged with smuggling drugs into Japan and the criminal who sent them, my esteemed colleague Rabbi Moshe Grylak referred to them as “Jews of...