Fair and Respectful
The arrest of a large group of teenagers for drug use and underage drinking at an unsupervised house party — the plurality of whom are students at an Orthodox day school — was an...
Rebuke without offending
Skip this if you never have to comment on delicate issues to people outside our community. The rest of us may recall the passage in the Talmud regarding the commandment to rebuke wrongdoers. In...
He Finally Got it Right
In a strange reversal of the career of Yochanan Kohen Gadol (who went bad after 80 years – see Talmud Berachos 29A), an illustrious British philosopher has foresaken atheism at the age of 81
Postville Continued
The Orthodox Union is responding to PETA’s video, taking many of the steps that my expert (affiliated with a different agency) recommended. Many Jewish bloggers have, nonetheless, worked themselves up about this. It seems...
One for Rabbi Scherman
Bloghead ran a contest for ad copy for the ArtScroll Chrismukka. The winning entry is actually rather clever.
Conversions and Hebrew Names
When I was asked to sign on as regular contributor to this Website, I was honored, pleased and also a little baffled about which topics to address. Most pieces that appear here are current...
The Mail We Get
Is there a point when the flood of letters we receive from Roshei Yeshiva and notable Rabbis seeking our support for needy families, mainly in Israel, becomes a serious communal problem? We need to...
Death Isn’t Pretty
Any viewer of an emergency room on prime time TV has seen a scene like this one: The EMTs race the victim into the ER, and he’s bleeding badly. They try to stop the...
Celebrating the death of our enemies
News of Arafat�s death a few weeks ago was met with�confusion. No one shed any tears, but people were unsure as to whether Jews ever celebrate the death of anyone.