To an extent kiruv (Jewish outreach) requires a suspension of reality. This is not necessarily a bad thing because from a religious Jewish standpoint, the reality of American life is harsh. The many good...

Dostoevsky used to say that Russians imbibe anti-Semitism with their mothers’ milk. Despite the terrible things it portends for our brethren in the FSU, I was somewhat underwhelmed by the news that the RussiState...

Following is a letter of mine appearing in this week’s Forward (although not online) responding to an opinion piece there some weeks back by social psychologist Bethamie Horowitz. Some of the data contained in...

Several weeks ago, I wrote that the Conservative Movement’s Rabbi Susan Grossman had mischaracterized Judaism’s understanding of when life begins, and the Jewish position on abortion, in an opinion piece in the Baltimore Jewish...

Only anti-Semites believe that Jews control the world. Yet anti-Semitism itself has choked and strangled the progress of nations. Writing in the June issue of Commentary, Paul Johnson calls anti-Semitism an irrational disease that...

On a northbound train today, the passenger who sat down next to me turned out to be a Reconstructionist Rabbi, a senior staff member of the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation. We shared the opportunity to...

Sometimes, we can be our own worst enemies. And at other times, we can help our enemies when they are getting their just desserts — not quite as bad as “our own worst enemies,”...

DovBear wrote: “Why kill a convicted murderer if there is a chance new evidence might one day exonerate him,” I don’t think a murderer should be executed unless his guilt is proven beyond a...

One springtime ritual in many homes finds Mom bringing out the summer clothing bins and selecting the short pants that her kids will be wearing over the coming summer months. Here then, as the...

Rav Shamshon Raphael Hirsch’s famous essay on teaching about science remains, as most of our readers know, at the center of an ongoing controversy. That controversy focuses on the final argument of the essay,...