The Spirit of Conservatism
Defining things by what they aren’t is almost always unsatisfying. Negative definitions can be useful in distancing us from what we need to reject, but they don’t tell us much about the alternatives. Applied...
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For the term "halacha".
Same Sex Marriage, Polygamy and Sharia Law: Some Thoughts
By Michael J. Broyde The first step to planning for the future is predicting the likely challenges: Same sex marriage is here, allowing religiously based discrimination is proposed as part of the solution and...
Rabbi Riskin and Female Halachic Adjudicators: It Does Not Compute
Rabbi Shlomo Riskin’s ambitious program to fill Israeli society with female halachic adjudicators just experienced a significant advance, as R. Riskin appointed a woman, Dr. Jennie Rosenfeld, to the position of Mahniga Ruhanit (Spiritual...
Dear Alyssa
Dear Alyssa, Congratulations on winning the Oratory Contest of the Jewish youth movement BBYO. The topic was: “If you could modify any of the Ten Commandments, which would you choose and what would your...
American Libertarianism, Orthodox Libertarianism, and Lessons from Shushan
Lately, I have been haunted with the feeling that the moral stability of American society is quickly and quite substantially crumbling. Although moral norms have very arguably declined over time, such decline seems to...
Ignore Headlines — and Be a Mensch
In February, 2001, I penned a piece for Moment Magazine that caused quite a ruckus. I had titled it “Time to Come Home,” and it was addressed to Jews who belonged to Conservative Jewish...
Private Matters
It comes as something of a revelation to many to confront the Rambam’s treatment of kiddush Hashem, or “sanctification of Hashem’s name” for the first time. One definition of the concept in Hilchos Yesodei...
Another Nail in the Coffin
The Conservative Movement has been hemorrhaging for a quarter century. In the 1990 National Jewish Population Survey, the movement constituted 37.8% of American Jewry. That percentage was less than half in the 2013 Pew...
Interesting Dialogue in Dialogue
Sometimes, you just have to use strong words. I imagine that was the intention of Rav Aharon Feldman, shlit”a, in a critical conversation that he had with someone described as “the president of one...
How To Explain Hilchos Geirus To The Skeptic
Thought experiment in three parts: How would you explain the essence of being Jewish, or the Jewish mission, to an interested outsider to the halachic community – Jewish or non-Jewish? After you formulate your...
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