[Note: We do NOT endorse the Kashrut of any products listed] And So if the Book of Esther is about Esther And the Book of Ruth is about Ruth Is the Book of Tanya about a woman named Tanya? ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ We are now Observing Parshat Zachor in Yeshivat Machmirim min Hamachmirim.  Here is the description as transcribed by the Press [...]

On Sukkot, many Jews welcome guests, ushpizin, which is related to the word “auspices,” who are the ancient heroes of Israelite history. On Friday night, we say barechuni le-shalom, that we ask angels to bless us, and in the Ashkenazi selihah, machnisei rahamim, we say words that sound as if we [...]

My Rabbinical Council colleague in Ohio, Rabbi Hanan Balk, reports a story about a student in a Cincinnati Jewish High School who had an acquaintance, who went to sleep one night but did not wake up in the morning. Candy was placed at the cafeteria table for the girls to eat after the horrible news [...]

Our learned colleague, Rabbi David Willig, correctly bemoans the fact that Jews enter the synagogue for Yizkor, and then leave, emptying the sanctuary, depressing the communal mood, and diminishing the impact of the sacred Yom Kippur day upon those who observe it. I suggest that we view Yizkor, with all of its challenges, [...]

The great scholar of Jewish economic law, Prof. Shalom Albeck of Bar Ilan University, taught that society’s ethics are the projection of individual ethics. A society cannot be just unless the people are by nature good, by disposition God-fearing, by habit, kind and generous. In Eastern European Yeshivot, we study the laws of lost and found, [...]

Rabbi David Halevi would abolish the recitation of Yizkor. We may not mourn on Shabbat or festivals. After and as a response to the Crusades, Ashkenazi Judaism instituted Yizkor. We learn several lessons from this innovation. Innovation does not end with the Talmud. The Talmud offers limits to innovation. We may not violate a Talmudic norm, [...]

There is an old debate among Jews who see themselves as Jewishly religious. They say the most outlandish things, they invent rules not found in the book that were additions recorded in editions of rabbis who are latter day saints. There was a member of my previous shul, an otherwise modern and proud of [...]

I was recently challenged with the claim, “you could be wrong, great rabbis think differently than you, why do you maintain your position which is not ‘main stream’. Is it not better to be ‘more frum’, more strict, less assertive and more modest? This challenge is directed by the so-called Orthodox “Right” toward the so-called [...]

What were the scandals? Why do they happen? What can we do about the scandals. The great modern Orthodox historian of American Judaism, Jonathan Sarna, called the past year Annus horribilis, the year of the scandal, the year where our American Jewish vows of honesty, decency, propriety and the moral high ground were observed in the breach. Just [...]

Halloween is the originally holy evening before All Saints Day, a day of Catholic obligation. Today, young people beg for candy and threaten with jocular jest, trick or treat. Orthodox Jews avoid the practice because of its origins, most non-Orthodox Jews do not share this scruple. What is the Jewish law regarding the day? If [...]

Abraham had two wives, Hagar the baby machine and Sarah the princess. Following the approach of Martin Buber, who distinguishes between I-It relations and I-Thou relations, the two wife relations can be understood. I-It relations are between objects; relations are entered for an end, a purpose, or a goal. The person views the other as an [...]

The ancients did not write their ideas in discursive essays, but in poetic narratives. The creative reader infers implicit meanings from the narrative, whether that narrative be staged drama or a written next. In order to appreciate the biblical view of women and living love, we survey the great statements in the literature of pagan [...]

When shopping in a large Kosher supermarket in Baltimore, Maryland, I had to find Brillo with soap. Asking an attendant for the product, I was informed that I was an uninformed consumer; soap is made from animal fat and is therefore not really kosher. Recalling the wisdom of King Solomon [Proverbs 26:4] I decided to [...]

On December 11, 1954, Baruch A. Levine, my doctoral sponsor, delivered his senior sermon at the synagogue of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. This event is reported in Elijah J. Schochet and Solomon Spiro, Saul Lieberman: The Man and his Work (New York: JTSA, 2005), 163-165, and one version was reported to me [...]

I. The question: how to read bYebamot 57b II. The Rational objection III. There is no such thing as “the” Midrash IV. What is at stake in the conversation: the Gnostic challenge to Judaism ________________________________ I. The question: how to read bYebamot 57b A Midrash taught that Rebecca was three years old when she married Isaac, who at the time just [...]

Question: The issue: mentioned over dinner that the father of a friend here in Israel told this story. He picked up a Chareidi hitch hiker. In the car, they spoke. The man asked the Chareidi fellow if he had served in IDF. The man said that he had not because he does not care [...]

Benjamin Netanyahu is constantly make offers, gestures,suggestions and compromises. The wily political survivor of the Israel Right know so the Palestinian Arab and Islamic culture better than those situated in the romantic, decadent West. President Obama wrests commitments from Netanyahu; Abbas makes no commitments because he wants more and cannot, in the West, say how much [...]

Esau was an ish tsayid, not a beast of the field; he was a man of the field. Jacob was yoshev ohalim, dwelling in tents, tammmim, whole, pure, innocent. As culture moved from Sumer to Assyria, humans domesticated humans but did not find domesticity. Animals and plants and lower level humans, wardum, the down people, [...]

Question: The issue: mentioned over dinner that the father of a friend here in Israel told this story.  He picked up a Chareidi hitch hiker.  In the car, they spoke.  The man asked the Chareidi fellow if he had served in IDF.  The man said that he had not because he does not care what [...]

Who amongst us does not have dysfunctional families? Our families are foibled by all my children, brothers and sisters, intrigue; infidelity, miscommunication, misbehavior, mistakes, and misperceptions all translate into missed opportunities, misplaced relationships, and relationships that are missing meaning. Who amongst us have relatives who are not estranged from one another? We are distanced from relatives, [...]