Losing the connection
Some weeks seem to have a theme; everything that happens revolves around the same idea. Last week was one of those weeks. The organizing insight: Too many of our young people lack the type...
Deception in Collecting Tzedakah
Jonathan Rosenblum’s craft is to inspire thought, so it shouldn’t be surprising that his recent piece on deception prompted some off-line questions concerning the permissibility of tzedaka collectors altering the facts. Is it ever...
Shmuley Boteach doesn’t get it
Shmuley Boteach raises a serious issue in a recent Jerusalem Post column (“Keep an eye on our children,” January 7): the supervision of post-high-school-age American students studying in yeshivot and seminaries in Israel. The...
I Don’t Know
National Review’s Jonah Goldberg is no advocate for giving in to gay demands for greater legal protection of their life style. He recently assessed the future of a proposed state constitution amendment in Virginia...
Yes, Bubba, It’s a Jewish Plot
In an unintentionally amusing video being e-mailed around, a large-boned, jowly man with a droopy mustache and hair parted down the middle sits at a desk and reveals a secret scam that Jews have...
The Changing Face of Kiruv
Outreach has come of age. Sorting through the variegated sense-impressions I was left with after two days at the Association of Jewish Outreach Programs (AJOP) Convention, this conclusion is the clearest. There are now...
The Price of Deception
Recently a young man claiming to be a poor chasan appeared at our door shortly before the onset of Shabbos. I gave him a good-sized contribution. A few minutes later, I went to take...
Double Standard
Many have written – mostly recently our own Yaakov Menken on Cross-Currents on Jan 11 – to the effect that it is unfair to associate Charedim with NK. While indeed extremely unfortunate, this association in...
Corrosive Corruption
I was quietly studying chapter 1 of the prophet Isaiah when from the holy text there leaped headlines from the Jerusalem Post, Haaretz, Maariv, Yediot, as well as the major newspapers of the West:...
Who really gives?
When I was much younger than today, my world was divided between the “children of light” and the “children of darkness.” I never doubted that my left-wing friends (i.e. everybody I knew) and I...