Dec 29, 2021
On December 27, celebrated children's author Chaim Walder was found dead after apparently shooting himself in a Petach Tikva cemetery. In November, Walder had been credibly accused of sexual assault and sexual harassment in an expose published by Haaretz; this was followed by the revelation that these particular...
Dec 27, 2021
Corruption. No transparency. Cover-ups. This, tragically, is too often the reality in the world of Orthodox Jewish charitable organizations. While some tzedaka funds are well-run, honest, and transparent, others are unprincipled and untrustworthy... and sometimes even worse. (Remember when you gave to help someone get...
Dec 20, 2021
Jews who live in majority-Christian countries are used to being inundated with Christmas imagery during the month of December. But while that might be innocuous per se, it also raises a more serious question of whether Orthodox Jews need to be concerned about the attempts of some Christian missionaries to convert Jews...
Dec 13, 2021
Last week, Sam Sokol of Haaretz reported that, “Israel’s ultra-Orthodox parties on Monday declared war on the 'Hellenists' in the government looking to upend the country’s religious status quo, promising to launch a joint national struggle to preserve the state’s Jewish character.” What changes are being...
Dec 2, 2021
When many people think about Chanukah, they think about heroism. And that makes sense: the Maccabees were real heroes, defying the might of their Syrian Greek overlords and fighting for Jewish practice in the Land of Israel. At the same time, much of the Jewish world gets the meaning of heroism wrong... or gets it...