After each of Israel’s wars, there has always been a vast gulf in perception between the Torah and non-religious communities. Israel’s lightning victory in the Six-Day War, the dramatic rescue at Entebbe, even the...
Where some people – perhaps wisely – stayed away from disciplines considered hostile to traditional beliefs, some intrepid souls managed, in the words of the Gemara, to discard the shells and take the kernels....
The JTA ran an article recently about the development of new web sites to answer questions from Jews around the world. Our own JewishAnswers.org features prominently, of course, though the article missed what I...
If you are travelling before or during Sukkos, and wondering how TSA will react to your lulav et al, go armed (no pun intended) with the following advisory from Aguda’s Washington office. Succot is...
Ever notice how many ridiculous assertions, many of them touching on matters of religion, are printed in serious journals weekly? Last week’s non sequitur prize goes to Jerusalem Report‘s cover story on sexual harassment...
With so much focus on the trepidation attached to standing before Hashem in judgment on Yom Kippur, I was pleased to find a reminder of a different aspect that I would have overlooked. The...
Several years ago Rabbi Yaakov Luban, Executive Rabbinic Coordinator of the Kashruth Department at the Orthodox Union, wrote a particularly creative and effective piece on teshuva and the Heavenly judgment, using computer-oriented images and...
Erev Yom Hakippurim, 5767. My Netanya neighbor Livia Bitton Jackson wrote in her Holocaust memoirs, I Have Lived a Thousand Years and Elli: Coming of Age in the Holocaust that she forced herself and...
R Adlerstein makes a big fuss about his non-comment and insinuates that all who comment on the scandal or take a side in it will soon need strong suntan lotion. Well then, why did...
A second follow-up to Rabbi Adlerstein’s non-response to the “Monsey chicken story:” In the comments thread, I wrote that there is a butcher here in Baltimore who carries no hechsher (Kosher certification). I also...