The Old Lady and the Triathlon
“I had to give up competing in Triathlons in America. I thought when I come to Israel I will now be able to resume. I was crestfallen to learn the triathlons are on Shabbat,...
We Dare Not Ignore the Context: A Reply to Rabbi Yitzchak Blau
Rabbi Yitzchak Blau just posted a strident critique of my writings about Open Orthodoxy. I had not written about Open Orthodoxy for quite a while, and even when doing so, my articles on the...
Jewish Action Magazine, Peshat in Tanach, and Jimmy the Greek
Jean Calas learned the hard way that reading a dubious peshat into a pasuk can be fatal. Mr. Calas, a Protestant, was tortured to death in 1762 on the spurious charge of having murdered...
Is Socialism Looming?
Back in 1947, a public relations firm called Whitaker and Baxter, hired by the American Medical Association, created a term to disparage President Harry Truman’s proposal for a national health-care system. It was a...
The Road to Gan Eden Gets Bluetooth!
Unfortunately, so does the road leading in the other direction. A new app has changed the game. This was way too strong an opening for a short piece, but I couldn’t resist. Limmud Torah...
Off-Color
Many of us pale-skinned Americans are puzzled by our darker-skinned fellow citizens’ strong negative reaction to the practice of “blackface” – Caucasians putting on black makeup to portray African-Americans. The issue burst into the...
Polar Vort
“Not as cold as Siberia.” That’s what my father, a”h, would say with a laugh if I complained over the phone about the frigid weather in Providence, where my family lived in the 1980s....
Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein – What They Missed
Although I never met him, I thought I understood who he was. At the levayah on Thursday, I learned how wrong I was. I thought I understood him, because his work over the decades...
Open Letter About RCA Members Violating Female Clergy Policy
We the undersigned, all of us members of the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA), including former RCA officers and executive committee members, decry the violation, by a small number of chaverim, of RCA policy...
Holocaust History Comes Home
Reaching out and touching the one of the crematoria doors in Auschwitz-Birkenau a few weeks ago was emotionally jarring. Visiting my mother’s home town of Konstanz, Germany, made it personal. My youngest son and...