What Price Chinuch?
This is not about the tuition crisis. There are prices we are asked to pay other than money. Consider this, from an interview with a major religious authority: People thinking about our engagement with...
Bursting Our Bubbles
Ever heard of Chartbeat? Assuming you answered no, well, neither had I, at least not until last week, when it was reported that the web analytics company released a new analysis of the reader...
Trying to Unravel the Legacy of the Rav
The legacy of Rav Yosef B. Soloveitchik zt”l of RIETS has been an enigma for many. Those in Orthodoxy who rejected Rav Soloveitchik half a century ago were extremely wary and disapproving of his then novel...
What Netanyahu Should Have Learned From Trump According To Mishpacha’s Moshe Grylak
“I rubbed my eyes; perhaps I was dozing.” Thus begins one of the first paragraphs in a very strange op-ed (February 15) by Mishpacha’s editor-in-chief Rabbi Moshe Grylak. With those words, the author expresses...
Reading Between the Hardlines
Mere days after senior Hamas operative Muhammad Hemada Walid al-Quqa blew himself up preparing a bomb, The New York Times noted, in a recent front page story about the Muslim Brotherhood, that “some of...
Curing the Annual Chumash Doldrums: New Volume of Abarbanel
We’re not supposed to say it. But for many people it is true. They have their favorite parshios of Chumash, and their not-quite favorites. The latter begin, for some, this coming week. Nothing wrong,...
Rabbi Bleich’s New Volume: a Potential Life-Saver
Rabbi Dovid Bleich’s volumes on Contemporary Halakhic Problems are the gold standard in evincing the ability of our mesorah and the timeless halachic tradition to respond to changed conditions and advances in knowledge. Volume...
Xenophobia and Loving the Ger
The commandment to love the ger has long been the subject of a tug of war between two camps. Traditional Jews understand it the way the Talmud did – as a reference to a...
Ba’alos Mesorah
In Putting Our Money Where Our Mouths Are, Dr. Rivka Press Schwartz poses an acute challenge to Orthodox communities. The discussion below is not intended to refute Dr. Schwartz, but rather to respond to...
What the Doctor Ordered
A Dutch doctor who ordered an elderly dementia patient’s family to restrain her as she was given a lethal injection was recently cleared of wrongdoing by a panel that considered the case. In 2002,...