Posted on: August 5th, 2009

Walk into any shul in almost any neighborhood on Shabbos and you can be forgiven for thinking you have mistakenly stepped into a nursery. The same goes for almost any Jewish wedding hall, where it takes as much skill to navigate the obstacle course of baby strollers as it does to look good on the dance floor.

Posted on: August 5th, 2009

Do we ever learn from our past? We have just lived through the saddest time of the Jewish year, when our collective thoughts turned to the destruction of our Holy Temple, and the root causes for that destruction.

Posted on: August 5th, 2009

Two of my four children live in places defined as “settlements” and are therefore characterized by most of the secular press as “obstacles to peace.” But if the journalists who use such terminology ever spent time there, among those idealistic and brave Jews, they might have to rethink their definition.

Posted on: August 5th, 2009

Larry Franklin, the third man in the sordid AIPAC affair, is not an entirely sympathetic figure. Although a person of sincerity and religious devotion, he agreed to testify against former AIPAC officials Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman in the trumped-up case forged by the FBI.

Posted on: August 5th, 2009

Last week, when Jews around the world recited the traditional Tisha B'Av lamentations focusing on the destruction of the ancient Temple in Jerusalem, a number of communities added a lamentation referring to a much more recent tragedy – the failure of the Allies to bomb the Auschwitz death camp in 1944.

Posted on: July 29th, 2009

“What did we learn?” is the question posed at the end of “The Accomplices,” Bernard Weinraub’s play about the mission to America of Peter Bergson, who, in 1940, was sent by Vladimir Jabotinsky to rouse the Roosevelt administration to save the Jews of Europe.

Posted on: July 29th, 2009

Pope Benedict XVI recently called on the Catholic community to promote human rights and bring an end to poverty. The pope’s directive, laden with biblical charges and humanistic principles, spurns deregulation and freedom from taxes and instead focuses on addressing the root causes of poverty and ensuring universal access to basic human needs such as clean water, sustenance, health, education and employment.

Posted on: July 29th, 2009

What’s so important about the Fifteenth of Av? It’s a day like any other day, right? Our sages tell us that on that day, some 3,300 years ago, in the Moabite Desert opposite Jericho, a miracle occurred. After the incident of the spies, God told our ancestors that the generation that had left Egypt would not enter the Land of Israel. Instead, their children would inherit the Land.

Posted on: July 29th, 2009

The Orthodox Jewish wedding season commences each year after Lag B’Omer and again after Tisha B'Av. In the weeks prior to those dates we watch the mail for the wedding invitations we receive – and notice the ones we do not. Sometimes we receive invitations to weddings and cannot figure out why we were invited; other times we wonder why a friend or acquaintance has not invited us to a simcha.

Posted on: July 29th, 2009

Soon after Cambridge police arrested and handcuffed Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. on a disorderly conduct charge, they realized the black man they wanted to prosecute was a renowned academic. As a result, he was released and the charges against him were dropped.

Posted on: July 22nd, 2009

I love books. I love our sacred Jewish texts and the many splendid commentaries that accompany them, but in truth all leather-bound, gold-embossed books call out to me. Verily, I am a person of the book. I read books, I write them, I consume them.

Posted on: July 22nd, 2009

You may applaud the idea of ordaining women rabbis, or you may recoil in horror at the prospect, but the simple fact remains that women already serve the Orthodox world in clergy-like positions.

Posted on: July 15th, 2009

Date: November 2, 2068Place: Edward Said University, Paris, Islamic Republic of Northern Gaul.Subject: Notes from the Special Guest Lecture today in the course "History of the Middle East," by visiting professor Osama bin Levy.

Posted on: July 15th, 2009

The other week, responding to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech that envisaged creating a demilitarized Palestinian state, perennial Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said, “I told President Obama that solving the crises of the Arab and Muslim worlds goes through Jerusalem.”

Posted on: July 15th, 2009

Soldiers from all Western armies, including Israel's and Britain's, are educated in the laws of war. Commanders are educated to a higher level so that they can enforce the laws among their men, and take them into account during their planning.

Posted on: July 8th, 2009

Now the pain intensifies. On the Seventeenth of Tammuz the Temple walls were breached and the unthinkable began to unfold in the Holy City of Jerusalem. This was the countdown to the unbearable events of Tisha B’Av.

Posted on: July 8th, 2009

Many years ago in Moscow, when we were ordinary loyal Soviet Jews – which meant we were deprived of our freedom and our identity and were powerless and helpless – we discovered there was a state of Israel, a state that fights for its right to exist and also for our dignity, a state that was waiting for us.

Posted on: July 8th, 2009

There is an important “take-away” lesson to be learned from the case of a frum storeowner in Queens who pleaded guilty in Criminal Court to molesting a young boy several years ago – namely, that the legal system works.

Posted on: July 8th, 2009

In an age plagued by narcissism, it is no wonder that “selfishness” has become a derogatory word. Too many leading figures have burned us with their greed and self-centeredness. The Bernie Madoffs of the world have compelled many of us to place more of a stress on altruism, philanthropy, and a rededication to the welfare of the world and its inhabitants.

Posted on: July 1st, 2009

As a congregational rabbi, I often see people in hospitals and other health care facilities. While each building may look different, the actual differences are rather minute. It was my privilege recently to visit a hospital that is a definite exception to that rule.