Rabbi Angel’s Lament
This post deals only with Rabbi Angel’s views, not with MO, in general, and was written and published last month before the piece on Noah Feldman. Steve Brizel, who was critical of the Feldman...
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For the term "halacha".
A Time To Be Silent: In Defense of Rabbi Lamm
The law does not say that a Jewess cannot marry a Christian, nor a Jew a Christian woman; nor does it state that the Jews can only marry among themselves. The only marriages expressly...
Conversion Confuddlement
From the Urban Dictionary: “Being confuddled is when your confused about being confused but u dont know wot your confused about so your completly confuddled.” One of the more frequent complaints about Cross-Currents, at...
The Elephant and the Non-Jewish Problem – Part I
A well-worn anecdote has it that a teacher assigned the writing of an essay with the requirement that it relate to elephants in some way. Looking through the submitted papers, the teacher came upon...
Of Concerts and Bans
by Rabbi Dovid Landesman I write this piece with a sense of b’dchilu u’rchimu – let’s translate this as trepidation. When I was younger I was less hesitant about being a semi-m’gadef – ascribing...
Rabbi Feinstein Speaks
A recent attack on Israel’s Chief Rabbinate invoked the late and revered American Orthodox decisor of Jewish law, Rabbi Moshe Feinstein. The attacker was Professor Benjamin Ish-Shalom, the director of Israel’s Institute for Jewish...
R. Akiva Eiger, Mendelssohn, and the Shema
Other than history buffs, few people would associate R. Akiva Eiger (RAE) with Moses Mendelssohn. The former occupies a position of awe and reverence for those who have ever worked through the mind-boggling depth...
Feldman’s Folly (Part One)
If the Orthodox were going to leave him out, then Noah Feldman was going to out the Orthodox. He might just have done us a favor. His thesis was that there was nothing surprising...
Conversion To Judaism: The Need For A Uniform Standard
Three weeks ago, Rabbi Marc Angel, the retiring spiritual leader of Manhattan’s Congregation Shearith Israel argued in the Jewish Press (“Conversion to Judaism: A Discussion of Standards“) that: (1) there is a multiplicity of...
Conversion: A Look From the Inside
Comments to Rabbi Shafran’s recent piece were so wildly all over the place, that I thought a few thoughts from someone who sits on a regular beis din (one of the few entirely accepted...
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