Had anyone other than a Jew penned what I am about to write he might be referred to as an anti-Semite. There may even be people out there, referring to this essay as anti-Semitic. For a long time, I have been living with fear that the day will come when Israel will cease to be the country that I and so many millions of others know, admire and love. Read More »

Kana-us, the corrupted Hebrew word for kana-ut or zealotry has taken Israel and the Jewish community worldwide by a storm creating unprecedented blowback. Read More »

Growing up as part of a minority has its advantages – sometimes. There is a certain convenience in being able to point the finger at “them;” blaming them for everything that’s wrong–after all they are the majority and majority rules. Read More »

Its been said that all an average student needs to become excellent is to be fortunate enough to experience one outstanding teacher. That relationship will provide the inspiration for a lifetime. Read More »

Every year as Cheshvon slides into Kislev I begin again pondering the meaning of the Chanukah story, its legacy, what we should be taking away from the story and its celebration. Read More »

“As the book goes so goes the Jewish People” references our rich past and possibly illuminates what the future holds in store for us. For Judaism the term “People of the Book” (Am HaSefer) was used to refer to our commitment to the Biblical text and the wider canon of written Jewish law (including the Mishnah and the Talmud). Read More »

The Ministry of Religious Affairs or more accurately the Chief Rabbinate is back in the cross hairs once again. Read More »

Being complex people living in extraordinarily complicated times I am flummoxed by the attempt at some scholars to offer simplistic answers to some very convoluted questions. Read More »

On the day after the release of Gilad Shali, the New York Times ran an editorial (Gilad Shalit’s release, October 18, 2011) excoriating Bibi Netanyahu for being able to close a deal with Hamas, “which shoot rockets at Israel”, but unwilling to Read More »

There are two guiding axioms regarding American Jews that can be said with relative certainty: Jews tend to list to the liberal left and have certainly been a force within the political left since the days of FDR and American Jews, regardless of Israel’s political proclivity to socialism have always been supportive. Read More »

Yoram Kaniuk won this past month in the TA District Court when they recognized his right to be registered in the Misrad Hapenim (Ministry of Interior) “without religion”. For Yoram Kaniuk this was a pyrrhic victory since he wanted to exchange his religious identification to a new one “Israeli,” thus listing as “Israeli” his identity. Read More »

Once again we are in the midst of the Days of Awe accompanied by my annual emotional turmoil. Even the name “Days of Awe,” a rough translation of “Yamim Noraim” puts me into a perplexed state, a condition of suspended spiritual animation where like a pendulum, I swing between the extreme of good and bad karma. Read More »

Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel were the two premier schools of thought in the century that encompassed the destruction of the second Temple. These schools stemmed from two great thinkers, one strident, the other more insightful, emerged out of the chaos created in the dissolution of the Sanhedrin by Herod. Read More »

There is a rather interesting halacha on the books which refers to “tircha d’tzibur” (inconvenience caused to the general public). Its narrow application would refer to synagogue service where additional non-obligatory devotional prayers are eliminated in order to avoid undue hardship for the community. Read More »

The security wall soon to be completed around Jerusalem conjures up Ghetto and having come back from Israel recently I have had this ghetto obsession. I realize, of course, that Israel isn’t a ghetto in the conventional sense of the European ghettos that our ancestors lived. Read More »

On the backdrop of the Levi Aron case (abducted and murdered Leiby Kletzky, July 12, 2011) the messy business of Mesirah has surfaced again, this time pointing to the sharp philosophical and principled differences between Agudas Israel and the Rabbinical Council of America. Read More »

On July 19, 2011 I flew El Al to Israel. It was a remarkable flight not only because it was less than half full but also memorable because of the musings it generated during the flight. Read More »

The San Francisco initiative to ban circumcision has been lauded by many within the liberal Jewish community as forward thinking and has gained enough legitimacy that it has been promoted in the Forward (July 10, 2011). Read More »

An obsessive preoccupation among many modern orthodox rabbis and educators is dealing with the slackening of Sabbath observance among many of its member’s progeny. Read More »

Guilt seems to be a character trait embedded in the DNA of Ashkenazi Jews (whether or not this is the case in the Sephardic community is debatable). Read More »