Jewish Blogs

No One Puts Hillary In A Corner. Or Makes Her Invisible.

Ah, such historical drama captured in this moment! As our Navy Seals closed in on Osama Bin Laden with Mossad-like stealth, our President, Vice-President and Secretary of State waited with bated breath and white knuckles—wait a minute.Something’s missing from this photo published in Brooklyn-based Chasidic newspaper Der Tzitung…um, where the f is Hillary? You know, America’s most powerful diplomat? The skilled ...

No More Chains

A precondition of freedom is to break the chains that enslave us. Oftentimes, the ideological and mythical chains that bind our minds subdue a person much more than the heaviest iron chains can. Why? Iron chains can restrict a body but ideological and mythical chains restrict the mind.The worst form of slavery is slavery of the mind, when a person’s ...

No Entrance!

The sign on the entrance to the main sanctuary of a synagogue in the USA where I spoke several months ago really made me laugh.Some people mean well, but they flub it when they try to get their message across. The directors of the synagogue probably wanted to convey to the congregants that it’s not respectful to walk in the ...

NJ Jewish Standard & Carl Paladino

While last week’s decision by the New Jersey Jewish Standard to apologize for the inclusion of a gay wedding announcement and then retract the apology made big news, I didn’t have a chance to weigh in on it. But now, that New York gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino has essentially done the same thing regarding the anti-gay comments he made to ...

Nice Jewish Boy Kicks Fundamentalist Christian Tuchus

The Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas, is best known for their charming “God Hates Fags” campaign, but apparently they needed to spice things up with a new target and a vacation:They brought their moronic minions out to the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles this week, where a reporter named “Brick Stone” confounded even their most articulate representatives with his ...

Newsweek’s Most Influential Rabbis

I love America. G-d bless America. It’s the only country I know that does not have a chief rabbi, thanks to a very divided Jewish community, and a government that is constitutionally barred from appointing religious leaders. Fortunately, elements of our so-called fourth branch of government, specifically Newsweek Magazine, has decided to anoint a list of 50 rabbis that it ...

Newsweek Magazine Affirms Female Orthodox Rabbi

Now in its fourth year, Sony Pictures chairman and CEO Michael Lynton and Gary Ginsberg, an executive vice president of Time Warner Inc., list who they think are the 50 most influential rabbis in the U.S. While the yearly ranking is merely based on the opinions of two hollywood moguls and some unscientific criteria, it generates a lot of buzz.Read ...

News to Make You Frown

Hey look, the New York Times is running two of the most depressing stories I’ve heard in months. And both are tangentially Jewish. Great. Who’s ready to get sad? The first story is about how testing for breast cancer is prone to error–a piece of especially bad news for Ashkenazi Jewish women, who have a higher risk of getting breast ...

New Yorker’s Talmudic Account of a Madoff Panel

From 1/19/09 we replay this (lightly) Talmudic analysis in the New Yorker of Madoff, starting with the premise that he was a goniff which is worse than a gazlan. With sex expert Ruth Westheimer quoting the sage Hillel. Also appearing Michael Steinhardt talking of the, “Banality of investing.”It was a clever current events report of a New York Jewish soiree that itself ...

New Yorker Blog: Elie Kaunfer Explains Digital Judaism

In their sweep of the landscape they contacted Elie Kaunfer, who said some intelligent things:…This is not to say that disputes about the value and use of digital texts do not arise. Rabbi Elie Kaunfer, the co-founder and executive director of Mechon Hadar, a traditional Jewish educational institute on the Upper West Side, said that arguments commonly arise in orthodox ...

Jewish Learning on an Oil Rig

Guillermo works in the oil and gas industry, a career path that placed him smack dab in the middle of rural Canada. If the location wasn’t a big enough challenge, Guillermo’s busy schedule made it impossible for him to attend synagogue or be a part of a Jewish community.Or so he thought. When his girlfriend sent him to MyJewishLearning.com, he ...

Jewish Ketubot for Christians

In the “wow we must be getting close to the age of redemption” story of the day, the Times reports that Christians are adopting Jewish marriage contracts in their wedding ceremonies.Christians Embrace a Jewish Wedding TraditionBy SAMUEL G. FREEDMANIn a San Antonio chapel last August, after reciting their wedding vows and exchanging their rings, Sally and Mark Austin prepared to ...