Who Is That Masked Fundamentalist?
Question for the reader: Which well-known Jewish figure is the author of the following recently-penned lines? [T]here is no reason for a famous person who just happens to be Jewish to command special respect,...
Reform and anorexia: two op-ed pieces
Below, two articles juxtaposed. The connection needs no comment. Jonathan Schorsch in the Jerusalem Post (the writer teaches Jewish studies at Columbia University): “Shafran may think that the Orthodox merely reject ‘a thing, a...
What Can be Done about these Canards?
I asked a group of American Yeshiva boys who were our Shabbat guests how they would respond to the accusation by Israel Prize laureate Professor Alice Shalvi that in Jewish marriage the woman is...
At Whom Do We Point Fingers?
When I posted my response to David Ellenson’s latest anti-Orthodox diatribe, I said that Rav Mordechai Eliyahu’s speculation that the Holocaust might have been caused, in spiritual terms, by the old Reform Judaism was...
Proof: no tikkun olam without G-d
In his post, “The Hijacking of Tikkun Olam,” Yitzchok Adlerstein wrote, “Tradition always understood that any human attempt at effectively remedying the world is doomed to failure.” In response, reader Gershon Josephs asked, “I...
Here’s Our Chance
Note: Fellow C-C contributor Toby Katz e-mailed me to say she enjoyed my last post, but that some of its important points appear too far down for some Internet-age readers accustomed to skimming pieces...
Let My Scientists Go
Back on April 13, in the spirit, perhaps, of the Passover then just past, The New York Times editorialized about the need to “free” something from the “chains imposed” upon it. The sentence’s subject...
History, Historians and How Not to Approach History
by Steve Brizel I don’t like to react to accusations, statements and articles by heterodox scholars. They have no halachic or hashkafic significance to me. I also believe that the evidence on the ground...
The Hijacking of Tikkun Olam
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg unwittingly committed felonious assault on proper usage when he explained his plan to reduce air pollution, including special fees for vehicles entering congested parts of Manhattan. “In my...
Stop the violence! Save the Reform rabbis!
In his post today, Rabbi Menken did not provide the definitive Orthodox statement that Rabbi Ellenson called for, but I will do so. First, here is part of the essay to which Rabbi Menken...
