Winter Harvest
In a forthcoming book, “Final Exam: A Surgeon’s Reflections on Mortality,” Dr. Pauline W. Chen writes about the many operations she performed on brain-dead patients for the purpose of procuring, or “harvesting,” their organs...
Some Random Pensees on Chareidi Education in Israel
This week’s English HaModia reported that the gedolei Yisrael have refused to permit Meitzav testing of student progress in certain core subjects in chareidi schools. The article attributed this opposition to fears that such...
A glass gem instead of a diamond
16 bKislev 5767 “After the prince lost the first two diamonds that the king gave him, the king gave him a beautifully cut glass gem for the prince’s ring.” That is the parable used...
The El Al Boycott
If the morning’s news is to be believed, the threatened chareidi boycott of El Al for 18 flights last Shabbos will result in El Al entering into a legally enforceable agreement to never again...
Burning down our own neighborhood — Reconsidered
What follows is not a recantation of my recent column “Burning Down Our Own Neighborhood.” Nevertheless, if an issue is worth writing about at all, there are usually two sides to it, and any...
Blame, Bava Kamma, and the Santa Monica Driver
There was very little closure when a judge recently ordered probation for George Weller, the 89 year-old man who three years earlier steered his car on a swath of deadly destruction in a Santa...
Ahead to the past
Here is my sister’s travelogue from her recent visit to our mother’s birthplace in Berlin: I had to choose whether to fly with my husband and two of our boys to Berlin, or whether...
Chiddush in Our “Beis Medrash”
By Yaakov Rosenblatt Hewed by Hashem into the essence of man is the need – the unmistakable and existential need – to add something to the experiences, choices, and lifestyle of the generation before...
Pelosi’s Father Aided Jews of the Shoah
With mounting fears in some circles that the Democratic Party’s long-standing support of Israel is perceptibly waning, we know of at least one high-ranking member for whom commitment to Jewish causes runs in the...
Givers don’t absorb
A few weeks ago, I spent a day with Rabbi Shlomo Raanan, the founder of Ayelet HaShachar, an organization that has placed religious families on sixty-five non-religious kibbutzim and yishuvim in recent years. In...
