431 Search results

Let’s say a person lives in Williamsburg, sports a shtreimel and long, curled peyos, and his father was the gabbai for many years in Rav Yoelish’s beis medrash. All his forebears in recent memory...

This week’s Torah reading sees Yaakov at the end of his life dispensing blessings to each of his sons. There is a comparable passage right at the end of the Torah, in which Moshe...

10th of Tevet “Those who say that suffering such as this has never befallen the Jewish people are mistaken. There was torture comparable to ours at the destruction of the Temple and at Beitar….”...

[Editor’s note: Steve Brizel is a frequent commenter to Cross-Currents, besides being a regular presence on Beyond Teshuva and Hirhurim. (As a long-time NCSY stalwart, and a regular mispallel at the shul of an...

All of us in the Cross-Currents community should be appreciative of Rabbi Angel’s courteous and professional manner in continuing this discussion. For readers familiar with forums that are little more than soapboxes for the...

[Editor’s note: An earlier post took issue with some of the ideas expressed in an article in the Forward by Rabbi Angel. He requested an opportunity to respond, which of course was gladly granted.]...

At the height of the ongoing controversy over shmita observance, an editorial appeared in this paper (“Shmita pragmatism,” Sept. 18) celebrating the heter mechira as the essential manifestation “of the religious Zionist ethos.” The...

What a pity that Orthodox Jews have not been active in the Right to Life movement, and have left Christians to speak for us. Yes, we sympathize with them and vote for conservative candidates,...

When last heard from, we were lamenting the alienation of younger, non-Orthodox American Jews from Israel, as detailed in a recent study by sociologists Stephen M. Cohen and Ari Kelman. Those findings parallel a...

Would you like to be a fly on the wall while a battery of secular and modern Orthodox academic experts are discussing the dynamics of change in the haredi world? If so, then today...