Haggadah – Two Views
The very word הגדה (Haggadah) conjures up wonderful memories of Sedarim past, reliving the story of the Exodus with family, friends and students. It’s used to refer colloquially to the booklet — a compilation...
The Four Answers
It is not only the Torah’s words that hold multiple layers of meaning. So do those of the Talmudic and Midrashic Sages – even the words of the prayers and rituals they formulated. Such...
Means and ends (part 2) – Mazal Tov edition
In one of my first posts to Cross-Currents I discussed the pros and cons of attending singles events on Shabbos and Yom Tov. I suggested that Shabbos and Yom Tov need to be ends...
Five-Star Pesach
I will never forget an address by Rabbi Ephraim Wachsman at an Agudath Israel of America convention on the topic “Living a Life of Ruchnios amidst Gashmius.” I had never before heard Rabbi Wachsman,...
In Every Generation… Passover Then and Now
by Rabbi Elchonon Oberstein As we approach the holiday of Pesach, our minds go back to the sedarim of our youth, when we were together with dear ones no longer alive. I have vivid...
Life . . . and the Pursuit of (Grants to Study) Happiness
The late William F. Buckley famously quipped that he’d rather be governed by the first one hundred people in the Boston phone book than by the first one hundred academics on the Harvard faculty...
Old Wine, New Containers
What do Rav Isser Zalman Meltzer, Artscroll, and the RCA all have in common? They figured out that outsourcing was the key to intelligibility. Rav Isser Zalman gave a weekly shiur, for which he...
Bondage of the Mind
My wife took one look at an advertisement in B’nai B’rith Magazine, and said “I see a post in your future.” She was right. At first, I was tempted to offer the following as...
Stop Calling Us ‘Ultra-Orthodox’
This is the excellently-expressed sentiment of English writer Abbott Katz, appearing in this week’s Forward. “Ultra” — the modifier of choice for a press hawking its smudged cartography of Jewish religious life — has...
Deconstructing Dayeinu
Much of our Seder-night message to our children, mediated by the Haggadah, is forthright and clear. Some of it, though, is subtle and stealthy. Dayeinu, for example. On the surface, it is a simple...