As much I was off-put sickened by the views espoused in the interview of Moshe Freidman of Beit Shemesh posted here , I was simultaneously relieved to see how easily it is to differentiate between his extremist ideology and that of the mainstream Chareidi one. Read More »

I first launched this on Cross-Currents about a month ago: Whose Problem Is It, Anyway? By Guest Contributor , on January 3rd, 2012 by Dovid Kornreich There is a recurrent theme that I’ve read on Jblogs and newspapers, and it has two parts: 1) Chareidi society somehow engenders extremism and these incidents in Beit Shemesh are its bitter fruit. Read More »

Rav Reuven Leuchter , a leading expositor of  mussar  and  hashkafa  who is teaching in one of the world’s leading kiruv training programs , and engages in front-line kiruv  himself, has published a small sefer (only 120 pages) in English on Tefila. Read More »

Since most people are so busy loudly complaining about how the Chareidi leadership is not responding to the current crisis, no one seems to have noticed that said leadership has just  responded to yesterday’s crisis: Same Sex Attraction in the Orthodox community . Read More »

Before all the current hysteria about the maltreatment of women by Chareidim exploded last week, Rabbi Adlerstein was absolutely gushing with praise for an article by Dr. Moshe Koppel about how the halacha and the halachic community develops and evolves in response to various external pressures and internal tensions. Read More »

Rabbi Gil Student has posted a fascinating excerpt from Rabbi Walter Wurzburger’s essay on the Rav in Tradition 1994 which can be read in full online here . Before addressing the excerpt in Reb Gil’s post (which will be done in a future post here, G-d willing) I want to highlight a different excerpt in the essay. Read More »

I was waiting until the passing of her Sheloshim to see what the blogworld would have to say about Rebbetzin Batsheva Kanievsky’s life and unique impact on the Chareid world before I ventured to speak my mind, and to my surprise, there was nothing on the web beyond the regular online Jewish news outlet coverage and obituary-type blogposts . Read More »

This post will be commenting on the latest trend in Jewish culture: The Jewish Music Video. I’ve been getting links from family members to all kinds of new music videos over these weeks and I want to present something that can put them into perspective for myself and my readers. Read More »

The following is a dramatic adaptation of Rav Moshe Meiselman’s shmuessin spanning the first four parshiyos of Sefer Bereishis.Anyone who wants to to use it or pass it on is requested to include proper attribution. Go The Distance Wewill start with the very end of this week’s powerful Torah portion and work ourway backwards. Read More »

Now that Dialogue-bashing month is over at Hirhurim, we can look back and take stock of where things are standing. Read More »

I seem to be detecting a pendulum swing in the Liberal Orthodox camp regarding Rav Soloveitchik. While I was coming of age in the 80′s and 90′s, the dominant trend in the “LO” world was to attach Rav Soloveitchik’s name to every controversial stance and envelope-pushing practice that was currently indemand by the liberal left wing constituency. Read More »

The latest from Scientific American : (Emphasis added) Single guys with high testosterone had better luck finding mates by the study’s end, and were more likely to have become fathers. But their testosterone plunged, compared to peers who stayed single. And the more hours a day they spent with their kids, the lower their testosterone levels fell. Read More »

Part III a) There is much about human existence which is neither related to a person’s inherent nature nor to his free-willed actions. I refer to the area of things which happen to a person that are not necessarily the result of the actions of any individual human being. Read More »

In the course of completing Meseches Sotaha for a siyum on a Yahrtzeit, the things that I have come across in the last chapter had my hair repeatedly standing on end. I found myself reading the screaming headlines and the sharpest social critique of our times right there in the gemara. Read More »

After reading Jerusalem Post’s write-up of the new Acappela Jewish group “Maccabeats”, I was proud and inspired by the wholesomeness and genuine unapologetic Centrist Orthodox image that these guys are projecting. Read More »

Introduction In prior posts we have established that without a doubt, the Rambam clearly affirmed the belief a certain form of astrology. It is a conscious influence of the stars which directly govern all natural processes and determine the generation, development, and duration of all earthly beings. Read More »

Reproduced from the other blog (with small additions) in order to present the entire series here: The Rambam is well known for saying some very controversial things regarding the primacy of the intellect and philosophical understanding. Read More »

In the previous post we discussed a dramatic act of King Chizkiyahu which diverged from his predecessors: The scrapping of the Copper Serpent fashioned by Moshe in the wilderness. He did this because the Jews in his time were using it as an object of worship and offering incense to it. Read More »

I We have an interesting “segula”in last week’s parsha, because the copper serpent was given life-savingqualities only for those who were bitten by the attacking serpents and no-oneelse. Read More »

I After reading the Defense Ministry’s conclusions about the sinking of the Altalena and its labeling those who carried out the strike as murderers I’m wondering if it isn’t politically correct to point out that the assassination of Prime Minister Read More »