A.B Yehoshua and Israeliut
Israeli novelist A.B. Yehoshua set off a firestorm at the gala 100th anniversary celebration of the American Jewish Committee when he contrasted the totality of Jewish life that one is capable of living in...
Branding and Message
As you may know, Project Genesis is looking for a logo (separate from that of Torah.org — see the bar at right for your chance to win an MP3 player by helping us find...
Continuity: Wrong and Right Answers
by Rabbi Avi Shafran Quite a stir ensued at a recent American Jewish Committee symposium in Washington when Israeli novelist A.B.Yehoshua called the hosting organization’s 100-year record “a great failure” and opined that Jews...
A Murder he Confessed To, But did not Commit
Two days ago, the NY Times had an article about a man freed by DNA testing, after being convicted and serving ten years in jail for murder. This, despite the fact that prosecutors insisted...
The Metzitzah B’Peh Controversy
Several readers, who are not Jewish Observer subscribers, wanted to read the article on Metzitzah B’Peh by R’ Chaim Dovid Zweibel to which Jonathan Rosenblum referred earlier today. It is enclosed herein, and explains...
Guess What’s Become Fashionable?
A funny thing happened on the way to the millennium. Nomenclature that was once limited to the Orthodox and dismissed as being parochial has gradually become de rigueur among non-Orthodox groups. One now finds...
Shtadlanus: A Matter of Perspective
What is the most effective form of advocacy for the Torah community to adopt vis-à-vis governmental authorities? Is it behind the scenes advocacy or public confrontation? The answer, as Rabbi Elazar Menachem Schach once...
More on Orthodox Rioting
I’m currently translating Rabbi Shlomo Lorincz’s memoirs. He relates that in the early ’50s there was a group called Bris Kena’im, which would note the numbers of cars travelling through religious neighborhoods on Shabbos,...
The Apostasy of the Monsey Fish
Remember the fabulous finned phenomenon of a few years past? A fish which began conversing with a worker in a store in a Jewish enclave near Monsey, and which, upon further interrogation, was found...
To Be a Rodef
The JPost reports that Atef Adwan, Hamas’ refugee minister, met with Rabbi Moishe Arye Friedman of Vienna today in Sweden. The Israelis, and most of the civilized world, criticized Sweden for letting terrorist representatives...