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...
On Halacha, no Compromises
About 20 years ago, I read an article in Tradition magazine in which the author posed the following “contradiction” in Maimonides’ Mishna Torah: We see that the Rambam usually adopts the “liberal” position. And...
The late Tommy Lapid and Dylan Thomas
29 b Iyyar For several years I was a part-time, self-appointed, undercover agent, infiltrating the Shinui party organization in Netanya. I thought about this on Sunday, 27 bIyyar, when during a two-hour drive south...
Judaism as Counterculture
What do Senator Joseph Lieberman, Attorney General Michael Mukasey and attorney Jay Lefkowitz, President Bush’s special envoy for human rights in North Korea have in common? For one, they have each come under severe...
What Would Hillel Say?
Once upon a time, Jews who found Judaism cumbersome simply declared the Torah obsolete and went about their lives as they pleased. They weren’t inclined to intellectual contortions. Some “progressive” Jews today, though, choose...
McCain, Hagee, and the Earthquake in China
[The following article first appeared in the May 29th edition of Jewish World Review , a site that does enormous good in putting Jews and traditional Jewish values in a positive light in front...