by Moshe Hauer In 1812, as Napoleon and his Grand Arme̒e were approaching Russia, many Jewish leaders were eagerly anticipating their arrival, hoping that it would bring the liberty, equality and fraternity promised by...
Last week was spent in Toronto, where most of my davening was in Congregation Shomrai Shabbos. One instantly notices that a great deal of thought went into the design of the shul, with an...
I mention my morning shiur fairly frequently in these pages, partly to indicate how important such a shiur with a rav whom each person in the shiur looks up to as a walking Mesilas...
The United States today is in almost every respect a more unpleasant country than the one I left over 35 years ago – less optimistic, less confident, and more bitterly divided. For the first...
Patheos has become the leading portal on the web for thought from the world of religion – the good, the bad, and the ugly. A short while ago, the editors sent a challenge to...
First Pew came for the Jews; then Pew came for the Christians. Martin Niemöller didn’t really say that – but he could have. The famed Pew study of Jewish religious life and attitudes (Pew1)...
I find it an odd enterprise to defend a book’s claims by recourse to… the book’s claims (and the congratulatory words of the author’s friend). So I will limit myself to facts, not Mr....
It is a woman’s prerogative, they say, to change her mind. The same ought to hold for a women’s program. Happily, the Tikvah Fund, the group that is responsible for the most intellectually stimulating...
In their rejoicing over the recent Supreme Court same-sex marriage decision, various Jewish groups grievously misrepresented Judaism. An essay of mine about the Jewish religious tradition’s true take on homosexuality and the formalization of...
Winds of secession are in the air. Rabbi Avi Weiss and his disciple, Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld, yesterday announced their immediate resignation from the Rabbinical Council of America, and Rabbi Weiss subsequently issued a broad...