Conservative Jews Deserve More than PR
All agree that the Conservative Jewish movement is in rapid decline. But by hiring a PR agency, the United Synagogue is going in the wrong direction — surveys and branding will not fix the fundamental problem.
Weekly Digest – News and Essays In and Out of Orthodoxy – Week of Parshas Tetzaveh 5776
THE LEGACY OF RAV BELSKY, ZT’L Obergefell and the Jewish Community – Fantastic essay by Rabbi Pruzansky American Orthodox Jews will miss Scalia, their great defender The Passing of Justice Scalia . . ....
Rabbi Gordimer and his Critics
I rise on a question of personal privilege on behalf of an esteemed colleague. An open debate of ideas is appropriate (as we have said all along), but unfounded mischaracterization of a writer’s motivations and dialogue with others is quite out of line.
A Monument to Discord
The new Israeli agreement to create an “egalitarian” section at the Western Wall promises not merely a fissure, but fragmentation. It has already exposed the fault line of disagreement between the Reform movement and the Reform-funded Women of the Wall.
The First Klal Perspectives Shabbaton
It was only a few years ago that a few guys tired of listening to each other kvetch, and put together a very modest action plan. The first step was a secret conclave of...
How to Disagree – My Exchange with Dr. Marc Shapiro
Yesterday was tense. It was uncomfortable. It was a day of squeezing in a lengthy reply to Dr. Marc Shapiro’s post about some of my writings, between loads of regular work and with almost no...
Weekly Digest – News and Essays In and Out of Orthodoxy – Week of Parshas Terumah 5776
Rabbi Genack’s Hesped for Rabbi Belsky Rav Yisroel Belsky Zt”l A thought about Rav Belsky Zt’L – by Mordechai Dornbush Orthodox Jewish trader, immigrant Harvard grad, killed by Manhattan crane collapse Obergefell and the...
Response to Dr. Marc Shapiro: Good Shot, but Wrong Target
It was a great polemical piece – but it sorely missed the point. Dr. Marc Shapiro’s new article, Open Orthodoxy and Its Main Critic, part 1, goes to town elaborating on my allegedly unfair and unbalanced...
New Contributions By Kiruv Superstars
The way we reach people changes all the time, but not the creativity of the real superstars. Here are two recent contributions by some of the most talented people in the world of kiruv,...
A Kotel Victory For the Non-Orthodox? Hardly
Asked for a statement about the Kotel compromise by the Los Angeles Jewish Journal, I complied. The Journal is hardly the reading experience of choice in the Orthodox community; my response was necessarily restrained....