Daas Torah: The Core Values
Talk about Daas Torah, be prepared for acrimony. There are few topics more divisive among Orthodox Jews. Many are given to dealing with the issue only with the volume up, making it difficult for...
Halting El Al on Shabbos: Menachem Begin
by Yehudah Avner The possible renewal of Saturday flights in the wake of El Al’s privatization calls to mind a Knesset oration of yesteryear. For days, tension permeated the Knesset. Stocky, gesticulating men combed...
Airport Christmas Trees Gone After Rabbi’s Request
That’s ABC News’ title for the following story, for which ABC also managed to provide the most inflammatory first paragraph that I’ve seen: There is a damper on Christmas cheer at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport:...
The ideology behind halakhic ideology
21 bKislev What is the ideology behind a conference titled:Halakhah and Ideology? It looks like it will tilt in the direction of suggesting that most halakhic decisions are ideologically motivated. But I will withhold...
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...