Columns

One point stood out from those stories: in contrast to the Koran, the great figures of the Torah were not beyond reproach. There was always room to be better.

Rabbi Cardozo responds to a letter concerning his article on Rav Soloveitchik (zt"l)

Jews have been an ever-dying people that never died, experiencing a continuous resurrection, like the dry bones Yechezkel saw in the valley. Purim, like the Jewish nation, will never cease.

He was used to my premonitions. So I called my labor coach she said she would bring her car close to where I was staying.

In parshat Tetzaveh, for once Moses, the hero, the leader, the liberator, the lawgiver, is offstage. Instead our focus is on his elder brother Aaron who, elsewhere, is often in the background.

The story of the Creation of the World is told with the utmost brevity: a mere 34 verses. Why take some 15 times as long to tell the story of the Sanctuary?

One daughter flew in from the UK for a mere 50 hours – quite an amazing feat!

My mother had a difficult pregnancy. Some doctors said it was a miracle I was born and came out as good as I did.

Yeshivoth are producing students with a prodigious amount of Jewish knowledge, but are they serving the students and are the Yeshivoth producing real Torah scholars or just walking encyclopedias?

Goldman's case would be the first time the Supreme Court considered a service member’s right of Free Exercise as protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution.

There are 613 commandments in the Torah. Why does Mishpatim, the first law code, begin where it does, concerned with slavery and freedom?

We were not familiar with the process of wiring money to Israel when I got engaged, so I was just waiting for the money to come by mail.

Yitro's suggested solution to Moshe's workload is basically a simple one and does not require any extensive judicial knowledge. So why did Moshe, who possessed great wisdom, not think of this himself?

As it turned out, despite recovering sufficiently and hopeful of having more children, I never did.

In parshat Yitro, Israel receives its first system of governance: a hierarchical structure of authority with Moses at the top. Why did this important development come, as it were, from outside?

During the past year I especially enjoyed looking at a website of a hotel in Monticello. Living near the beauty and calm of the water really appealed to me.

What happens at the sea is poetic justice of the most exquisite kind. The powerful are now powerless, while the powerless have made their way to freedom.

The Talmud teaches only when making a sincere effort to reduce the pain of fellow human beings can one be called a great person! Those who do follow this approach are unsuited to be religious leaders

I remembered the years of bringing up six teenage daughters. Of course they weren’t all teenagers at the same time but sometimes it definitely felt like it.

Judaism is not a religion of blind obedience. Astonishingly of 613 commandments, there is no Hebrew word that means “to obey.” Judaism is the rarest of phenomena: a faith based on asking questions,

The ongoing legal saga of whether Dr. Simcha Goldman could wear his yarmulke while serving in the US Air Force

With no other choice in sight, David continued along his path until he finished high school without having any substantial plans for his future in mind.

Pesach represents the start of the great journey of Jewish history – from slavery to freedom, Egypt to the Promised Land.

Our poor daughter well remembers her highly-anticipated bat mitzvah trip with us to Israel, that unfortunately fell far short of her expectations.

When Moses asks, “Who am I?” He feels himself unworthy and uninvolved. He may have been Jewish by birth, but he had not suffered the fate of his people. How, then, could he become their leader?

Nobody doubts that unity of the Jewish people is of crucial importance. Still, we have to ask ourselves if in all cases unity is really THE highest value to strive for.

Only a civilization based on forgiveness can construct a future that is not an endless repetition of the past. That, surely, is why Judaism is the only civilization whose golden age is in the future.

There are people who come over to help us give the babies a bath. We have all learned to do this in assembly line fashion. We could not do it all alone.

I happily assured her that I did in fact have no doubt that the change of name had a lot to do with their new status.

The scene was surreal. We could hear the battle raging in Aza, but in the host’s realm there was relaxation, conversation, and the bubbly voice of our grandson.