By Rabbi Michael J. Broyde Dear Rabbi Adlerstein, I always look forward to your posts on Cross-Currents, and “Yerushalayim Shorts” certainly caught my attention. The middle one, in particular, surprised me. You lament an...
Killing takes a toll – on the killed, of course; that’s pretty obvious. But also on the killers. That is something that the Ohr Hachaim introduces in his commentary on the pasuk “And He...
You’d think that it might be kind of thrilling to participate in an event occurring for the first time in over 3300 years. It really wasn’t so much. Reflecting on the irony of its...
Past Democratic conventions have seen a slow but steady decline in support for Israel in the party platform, ever since Barack Obama became the party’s nominee.
The omission of any mention of Israeli victims of terrorism from an International Day of Remembrance of and Tribute to the Victims of Terrorism display at the visitors’ hall of United Nations headquarters is...
It’s remarkable how prominent eating is in the Torah. The designation of which animals one may eat, the consumption of parts of all korbonos except olos, matza on Pesach, seudos on Shabbos and Yomtov…...
A standard term for idols in the Torah is elohim acheirim, “foreign forces.” At one point in our parsha, though, the term elohim is used without the second word, signaling, perhaps, a less blatant...
The online encyclopedia is big tech’s antisemitic propaganda arm.
The navi Yeshayahu famously invokes a metaphorical bovine and equine at the beginning of his prophecy, which is recited as the haftarah of the parsha, “An ox knows its owner, donkey its master’s trough. Yisrael...
For a religion derided in some circles as denigrating women, Judaism would seem to have an odd attitude. In a famous aphorism based on the list of adornments in our parsha (Bamidbar 31:50), Chazal...
