Jewish Blogs

Ramblings about Death and Appreciation

Even as I mounted my bike and rode up the switchbacks through towering redwoods, I couldn’t relax. It was too close to shabbos to relax, sure I was happy to finally be away from people, the city and any distractions besides for my sweaty brow and labored breath. The ground was soft and I rode real hard, but I still ...

Raise Your Glass – The Maccabeats Purim Song

This year is a leap year on the Jewish calendar so there is a second month of Adar. The fun and silly holiday of Purim occurs this month and that means the levity has begun. Two funny videos for Purim are already attracting quite a bit of attention on YouTube.The Yeshiva University a capella group The Maccabeats have followed their smash hit ...

Rahm Emanuel’s Son’s Bar Mitzvah & Religious Pluralism in Israel

As I was preparing to board a plane home at Israel’s Ben Gurion International Airport a few weeks ago, I followed the news reports that Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s son’s bar mitzvah would be moved outside of Jerusalem for security concerns. Rahm Emanuel and his Hollywood agent brother, Ari Emanuel, brought their families to Israel on vacation and for their ...

Rabbis Throw Planned New Jersey Hebrew Charter School Shalom Academy Under the Bus

Jewish Week reports that a kashrut official and an area rabbi and several others are speaking out last-minute against a planned New Jersey Hebrew charter school.To our mind, after first supporting it, now throwing a major new school project under the bus is not a very kosher thing to do, especially when the rabbis in question have no visible education ...

Rabbis in Israel Force Restaurant without Mechitzas to Close

Charedi Rabbis in Israel, backed by Agudath Israel have decided that certain restaurants without mechitza’s who serve women should lose their hashgacha. Warm Eating, is at the center of the controversy. Not only do they not have a mechitza in their restaurant, but they even have female servers, which actually interact with male customers whom they are not married to. ...

Rabbis Gone Wild – Tasteless Titillation

There are some topics relating to Judaism that we don’t analyze here because they fall into a category that we don’t want to cover: Rabbis Gone Wild.As in the similar sounding DVD series (i.e., Girls Gone Wild, which we have seen advertised on late night TV), the Rabbis Gone Wild series subsumes misbehaving rabbis who flash their commentaries to the media, reveal their law ...

Rabbis discover that there are bugs everywhere

After a Reditt user uploaded photos containing microscopic bugs found in New York City’s water supply, Rabbi around the country gathered around high powered microscopes and came to the shocking discovery that there are bugs everywhere, word in the shtetl has it that they have been debating what to do about breathing.According to sources inside the orthodox Rabbinate, banning air ...

Rabbi – What I Really Do Meme

The “What I Really Do” meme has taken over the Internet.As explained on the knowyourmeme.com website: “What People Think I Do / What I Really Do is a series of visual charts depicting a range of preconceptions associated with a particular field of occupation or expertise. Unlike image macro series that are based on singular stereotypes like Advice Animals, this series ...

Rabbi Soloveitchik DVD, “The Lonely Man of Faith” Review and Memoir

The inspiring film, “Lonely Man of Faith,” is an homage to and biography of my revered teacher Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, known respectfully as the Rav.I am hardly a neutral reviewer. I studied for four years in the Rav’s shiur (Talmudic seminar) from 1969 to 1973 and I got to know him well outside of the classroom. I was not ...

Rabbi Run

I haven’t had much luck with rabbis. Or is it that they haven’t had much luck with me? I don’t know. But it’s been an issue. Why else would I be writing about it?Common sense should tell me that since I’m speaking of perhaps only four or five rabbis, then I’m speaking of much less than one-hundredth of one percent ...

Rabbi Michael Broyde Interviewed for Job of Chief Rabbi of Great Britain

The Times of Israel reports that Rabbi Michael Broyde “emerges as frontrunner for British chief rabbi post.”A “source close to the search process” supplied information on the process to the TOI including this tidbit, “There has also been strong lobbying for Broyde by the chancellor of Yeshiva University, Norman Lamm, who in a letter called Broyde ‘the finest mind of ...

Rabbi Lichtenstein’s Foreword to Mikra and Meaning by Nathaniel Helfgott

Rabbi Nathaniel Helfgott has written an incisive and perceptive book of literary approaches to selected biblical texts, Mikra and Meaning. The work must be examined within the literature of such studies written for the modern Orthodox reader, that is the college educated observant Jew. It stands out as a remarkable success within that genre.What struck us in this book was ...