Fink or Swim

Ruth Colian is running as a Haredi woman for political office.

The article argues that while naturally aligned with their fellow orthodox Jews, women from the modern orthodox community in Israel are finding themselves aligned with secular feminists.

It’s really not that different than the situation in Israel with the charedim. Both situations need insiders to make the change happen.

If the Syrian-Greeks were not pushed out of the land, Judaism would have been lost.

Why does a opinion in the Talmud say the last verses in Devarim were not written by Moses? Was it the easiest solution to a very obvious problem?

Certain books are excised from the subscription, in order to reinforce an imaginary history where nothing was inconsistent with Haredi Judaism.

Megilas Taanis simply proclaims the 25th of Kislev a holiday and it is forbidden to mourn for 8 days. The text does not give a reason for the celebration.

It is unfair to judge a 52 year old man with the glasses of a person who lives in a different world.

Trying to explain Holocaust deaths as tikkun and a way of cleansing a soul is offensive.

People were literally saying that a chasid cannot write so well. It’s impossible they claimed.

Rabbis have to stop dismissing everything that comes from outside the Beis Medrash.

Human nature is such that hearing something over and over again for forty years will inevitably have an impact on the person.

Dvar Torah for Nitzavim Vayelech.

In order to truly appreciate Torah, one must be a master over one’s spirit as well.

Many great Jewish thinkers have described Jewish prayer as a form of meditation.

What do we do when we want to be mad at God but we also want God to make it all better? Indeed, what do we do?

The NY Times has a very (appropriately) one-sided article on the Baruch Lebovits and Sam Kellner situation.

There is no real theological reason that tznius be heavily codified in Jewish law while other areas of our lives that require modesty are left to our whims and desires.

The gist of Rabbi Shafran’s argument was that Rabbi Sacks was criticizing a legitimate form of orthodox Judaism and was doing so from a place of ignorance.

The revelation continues as the world progressed and however the Torah was emended or edited after Sinai was part of revelation.

The Talmud is making a general statement for which there are more exceptions that situations where the rule applies.

Mormons are expected to be chaste in every possible way and this can be particularly difficult for young men.

It’s even more strange when the jokes come at our holiest times of the year.

When we are dealing in non-legal matters, we are no longer concerned with precedent.

According to the Torah Temimah...

This kid gets a medal for coming forward.

The world lost a great man last week.

Women learning Torah is becoming increasingly permissive, but women wearing tefillin is becoming increasingly stringent.

Very few middle aged and older people consider themselves ultra-orthodox. It’s a youth movement.

A kashrus agency should be concerned with one thing and one thing only: the kosher status of our food.