Ferry Tale
Sitting among other commuters in the cavernous terminal, waiting for the next ferry from Staten Island to Manhattan, I sensed some commotion in my periphery. Looking up from my reading, I saw a 40-ish...
Saying It Loudly and Frequently Does Not Make It True: The Tablet Article on PORAT
Apparently, it is believed that an aggressive PR blitz which broadcasts pretty much the same information over and over again is the most effective way to convince people that something is good and true....
The North Carolina Legal Battle and the Its Larger Message for the Jewish People
This article originally appeared on Arutz Sheva. It’s described all over mainstream media as the North Carolina Anti-LGBT Law – intentionally creating a picture of old-time Southern bigotry, conjuring up images of signs in...
A Kedushah Primer: Response To Readers
Rabbi Safran’s important piece stimulated a flood of comments and responses, the vast majority as of yet unpublished. Most fall into a few discrete categories, and might best be dealt with en masse. Here...
Weekly Digest – News and Essays In and Out of Orthodoxy – Parshas Kedoshim 5776
Kohanim May Not Be Permitted to Visit Liberty Science Center This June-January He Was My Father On Losing A Friend Meet the Women Changing the Face of Orthodox Journalism NEW WHITEWASH OF FDR’S FAILURE TO...
Holiness Does Not Have an Expiration Date
A single standard applies. Not just for one time, but for all time. It is not for the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance (JOFA) or anyone else to redefine that standard, for the standard was put in place from the beginning. “You shall be holy for I, the Lord your God, am holy.”
The Soloveitchik Chumash – New Volume Released
With considerable embarrassment I offer this entirely unnecessary review. Unnecessary, because the previous two volumes of the Rav Soloveitchik Chumash were earlier introduced to readers of Cross-Currents. Those two reviews are the two witnesses...
Yisro, Pablo Escobar, and A Coming Wave of New Converts
What do modern-day conversion and Yisro have in common? Not so much, according to the people I know. Records kept over many years by the beis din on which I sit (the RCC, in...
Hubris Heights
Three years ago, geneticists Drs. Stephen Friend, Eric Schadt and Jason Bobe set out to search international databases for people who were over 30 and healthy but who carried mutations that typically cause childhood...
The Last Thing We Need is a Degenerated and Compromised Orthodoxy: A Response to R. Yitz Greenberg
It’s hard to take the article seriously, due to its vast misunderstanding of what Orthodox Judaism should be as well as the article’s quite erroneous general assumptions, but something needs to be said in...