Communal Obligations
If you’re rich enough, you can command an audience for virtually any nonsense. So when mega-philanthropist Michael Steinhardt recently told a group of 50 graduates of Yeshiva University that the Orthodox were not fulfilling...
Food Crosses All Boundaries
There may not be many articles in Ha’Aretz that charedim would agree with, but here’s one that all can… well, scratch that. Ashkenazic Jews aren’t particularly known for enjoying spicy foods, either. There are...
What is Pluralism, Anyway?
Mrs. Katz’s post about pluralism today reminded me of something from the Jewish Week’s description of highlights from the USCJ Convention. Here are the two relevant paragraphs: An address by Rabbi Menachem Creditor, the...
Chanuka — holiday of pluralism or holiday of truth?
With Chanuka coming in a few days we can be sure that along with the Chanuka tree and the Chanuka wreath, we will have the annual round of phony newspaper stories about Chanuka being...
On Honesty
Rabbi Reuven Hammer, head of the Rabbinical Court of the Masorti Movement and the Rabbinical Assembly of Israel, has an op-ed on JPost.com which relates directly to my post of yesterday evening. Officially, the...
Response to Comments on Tookie
Some folks – in the Comments section, and in personal communications – really disagreed with my piece on Tookie. I disagree back. The common denominator of the malaise of the largest group is that...
Just What We Needed…
No time to travel in order to learn about Judaism? Hey, no problem, now a Rabbi will gladly educate you over the Internet, and then invite you to sunny Miami for the “seminar, ceremony,...
Another Low for Haaretz
As most of us know, Professor Robert Aumann received the Nobel Prize in Economics several days ago. The headline of Haaretz’s story covering the event was: “School told Nobel Prize Winner in economics ‘you’re...
Who wrote the Torah?
A few days ago Yaakov Menken wrote about the Documentary Hypothesis, and I meant to get back to that. Several of the comments on his posts seemed to assume that if any mistakes or...
Heterodoxy, by the Numbers
So, as mentioned earlier, Ori Pomerantz sent in a sharp question a few weeks back. Imagine that tonight there was a miracle, and tomorrow morning all the rabbis and chazzanim of the heterodox movements...