The Magnificence in the Mundane
With the approach of spring, the synagogue Torah-reading segued from accounts of the seminal events of Jewish peoplehood, the exodus from Egypt and the revelation at Sinai – to a series of social laws,...
A Tale of Two Synagogues
While the byline may be mine, both the title and much of the content herein were contributed by Rabbi Dovid Katz, of Beth Abraham Congregation here in Baltimore. His drasha this morning related to...
Enhancing SiteRecommender
Fighting web comment spam continues to be a major issue with popular blogs. We installed the ‘akismet’ tool for WordPress on January 2, 2006, and by July 14 it had trapped over 10,000 spams....
Squid Pro Quo
The half-ton squid caught in waters south of New Zealand in February – 33 feet long and weighing 1089 pounds – isn’t kosher, but it can still serve as food for Jewish thought. Such...
A Pesach Thought
A sefer I had not turned to till this year yielded one of the most delectable thoughts on the Hagaddah I’ve seen this season. I happily share it with our readers. The Baal HaHagaddah...
Small Victory in the Matzah Wars
The battle between fans of hand shmurah and machine continues unabated, having changed very little since the opening rounds in the early nineteenth century. Some people point to the halachic difficulty in incorporating kavanah...
Whither Conservatism? – I
As the title indicates, this will be (or, given my track record, might be) the first of several posts focusing on recent developments in the Conservative movement. I therefore want to preface these posts...
On Shteibels, Internet-Induced Uniformity, and Baltimore
A recent stint as a scholar-in-residence in Baltimore drove home a point that I first learned the hard way decades ago. Shteibelization is not a panacea for unhappy shul-goers. I had not been out...
Embrace the abnormal
Daniel Gordis is perhaps the most eloquent writer from a traditional Zionist perspective in English today. Yet even he admits in a recent essay, “A Place Called Hope” , that Zionism has demonstrably failed...
Means and Ends
by Rabbi Harvey Belovski Much has been written about the predicament of mature singles in our communities, their frustration, sense of helplessness and feeling of exclusion from mainstream Jewish life. However, the religious fallout...