The New Jacobinism
Rabbi Eli Baruch Shulman Historians wonder about the difference in outcome between the American Revolution, which resulted in a liberal democracy, and the French Revolution, which resulted in terror and tyranny. Why was the...
SCOTUS on Same-Gender: What It Means; What It Doesn’t
1) It is not true that five members of the Supreme Court conspired to do an end-run against the will of the public and the sense of the Constitution. Well, maybe the Constitution, if...
Agudath Israel Statement on Supreme Court marriage ruling
June 26, 2015 Agudath Israel of America issued the following statement in reaction to today’s 5-4 Supreme Court ruling that states are constitutionally required to permit and recognize marriages between members of the same...
Michael Oren’s New Book and the Mendacity of the Media
What, should Cross-Currents be the only one out there not to review Michael Oren’s new book before it even hits the stores? Especially after one of our readers, Stefanie Argamon, was nice enough to...
Agudath Israel Statement on Charleston Murders
June 17, 2015 STATEMENT FROM AGUDATH ISRAEL OF AMERICA ON THE MURDERS IN CHARLESTON The deaths of nine people at the hand of a gunman at Charleston’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church is not...
R Aharon Lichtenstein zt”l – The Last Word
We gave more space to the petirah and the life of Rav Lichtenstein than anyone else we’ve covered in Cross-Currents, chiefly because we reasoned that our readers knew less about him than they did...
There’s a Reason Hashem Invented Capitalism
The real haters won’t be satisfied until all the men close their gemaros. But for others – the majority of Israelis, I am led to believe – if families are self-sufficient and not on...
Ordination of Insubordination
“We’re going to blink and there’ll be 100 Orthodox women rabbis in America that have been given ordination”. –R. Adam Mintz, professor of Talmud, Yeshivat Maharat Within the week, three Orthodox-identified rabbinical ordination programs for...
Appraising Children
The teaser headline on a Business Insider article — “The ultimate status symbol for millionaire moms on New York’s Upper East Side is not what you’d expect” — is explained by the piece in...
47 Homicides and Counting
Why are so many young black men being murdered in Baltimore, after Freddie Gray? It’s what happens when police know they might be arrested for doing their job.