I’ve been blogging here for a long time, as blogs go, about six years.It’s been a very useful, helpful outlet, but all good things must come to an end and I’m starting to think about finishing up.First, the nature of my questions are changing. Read More »

Dear Friend,I don’t know if I should confront you in real life, so like a true coward, I am writing to you online.We go to the same shul and our families are friends. You might even read this blog. Your teenaged daughter has been asking me for weeks why my oldest girl, my 13 year old, does not come to shul. Read More »

My 8 year old was going to have a sleepover for her birthday party. It was a big deal, with lots of planning and excitement. Making cupcakes, seeing a movie, getting their nails done, etc. We invited a few kids from the neighborhood, one of them was our secular ( possibly not Jewish?) next door neighbor’s kid, a cute second grader. Read More »

       Hennie waddled out of the chicken pen and into the small yard. Her friends were already there, chattering and pecking away. She loved them so much, each one with her own personality and funny mannerisms.  There was Penny, the most talkative of the bunch, she could hardly get a bite of corn in before starting to jabber again. Read More »

Many websites have tznius-related posts this week. I’ll sum them up for you and then ask my Rosh Hashanah question.   Matzav Tznius Article Here .  Summary: Having women join hatzalah for ob-gyn emergencies would be immodest. It is a breach of tznius standards.  Better let the men deliver babies. Read More »

The parallels between the rise of Early Christianity and what is going on in some factions of Chabad is well known and has been extensively written and argued about by people with more knowledge that I have.What is less known because it is maybe just beginning is the weirdish cult-like following starting behind Shalom Mordechai Rubashkin. Read More »

Some people asked how the conversation with the principal went. I guess it could have been worse.It was basically a dance between two very polite and and respectful people, each one trying to get the other to concede the point. Read More »

My friend from Israel is going through a very rough time. She recently left a terrible marriage, complete with mental and physical abuse.She waited until she couldn’t take it anymore, sold her jewelry, took her three children and moved out. Her husband refused to give her a get and also refused to get a job. Read More »

This past week was Parshas Shoftim and so in parsha class this past Friday, my daughter learned about the Jewish legal system.The main point of the lesson was about how the Jewish justice system is vastly superior to anything the secular world has to offer. Read More »

One funny article here . Rabbi Ashkenazi from Kfar Chabad has run out of options to solve The Tznius Crisis and so now he will take pictures of immodest women and have his wife (of course) review the photos and speak to the young ladies in question.  Yeah. Read More »

There are three Orthodox schools here. One is far, far, far right of center. The girls get married before high school has ended and the school publishes its own text books so that no one should ever read about divorced parents or boyfriends. That school was out of the question for us.Then there is the school that is just plain old right of center. Read More »

My oldest daughter was invited into an online chavrusah, using skype or something like that. The chavrusah leader has chosen The Garden of Emun a to study, so we went out and bought the book.  It’s a pretty well known sefer, I’ve read lots of posters on womens’ websites who swear by it. Read More »

In an open forum on imamother, the ladies are discussing teenage puberty. One anonymous poster writes : My brother was skipped a grade to start at Telshe Yeshiva days after his bar mitzvah. Read More »

I am starting a new job next week and I really do not want to fast on Tuesday.  First of all, I do not really care that the beis hamikdash was destroyed. I don’t think I would have enjoyed all those animal korbanos and the Sanhedrin is not really up my alley either. I don’t wish and pray for a theocracy to rule over all of Israel. Read More »

So my husband and the kids were away this shabbos and I decided to check out the “egalitarian” shul in our neighborhood. It was interesting. I was a little overwhelmed initially. It was weird to see women leading the tefillah and being called up to the Torah and leining and taking an active role. Read More »

Out of all the millions of kind and decent New Yorkers, a little lost boy asks for help from someone who turns out to be a homicidal sadist. Read More »

There’s a case pending before the Supreme Court now and the frum organizations are on the wrong side here.  In Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC, the Supreme Court is considering whether a parochial school has the right to fire employees at will. Read More »

Here’s the video and the imamother discussion about it.A group of chassidim and Rabbi Sharon Kleinman are on opposite sides of the gay marriage debate. There are a lot of protesters at this rally and some of them are posing for pictures with their hands around each other. Read More »

No time to write much, studying for the bar and packing for the move is taking up all of my time. But just recently I was trying to find something about bechira on chabad.org and came across this speech that the Rebbe apparently gave to a group of college students in the 60s. Read More »

There’s a new blog out there. The author is an anonymous 26 year old woman with 7 children who is currently pregnant with twins. She was raised in some sort of Jewish cult in which the father abused his daughters and the wife and everyone wore veils and females were not allowed to speak in the presence of males. Read More »