The Meaning of Tisha B’Av. On Wednesday night –Tisha B’Av — we mark the fall of the First Holy Temple (Churban Bayit Rishon) at the hand of Babylonia and the second Holy Temple (Churban Bayit Sheni) at the hand of Rome. The Talmud lists and discusses several tragedies that happened to the Jewish People on Tisha B’Av. It initially was the night when the Jews in the Wilderness, having heard the Evil Report of 10 Spies who told them that ...
Continue Reading → ShareWith Rosh Hashanah on the horizon, we pause to take stock: What is a year?
We do not get many of them in a lifetime. According to Moshe Rabbeinu, in Psalm 90, we typically may look to seventy – if with strength, to eighty – of them, and most of our years are about toil and pain, struggle and “what-not.” That is a year.
For us, we use the calendrical marker to look ahead, partly by looking back. What did I ...
Interesting, how people journey — almost aimlessly — yet en route encounter their kismet
“And G-d said to Abram: ‘Go forth, for your [best interest], from your land and from the place of your birth and from the house of your father to the land I will show you.’”
— Gen. 12:1
Our Torah reading this week begins with G-d bringing Abram to an unknown destination, leading him away from the security of his childhood home, family, and ...
Continue Reading → ShareWhen a Torah-observant rabbinic figure participates in a Church service honoring a newly elected American President, the episode creates an interesting problem for other Rabbonim in the future, who choose not to do so. When I have faced that situation in the past, I have explained the situation gingerly to my political sponsor, who always has respected the halakhic position. I would in the future, too. The situation becomes more awkward if asked on the rebound: “But wasn’t there some Orthodox ...
Ginny Thomas and Anita Hill are at it. This is quite a story.
Justice Thomas’s wife, Ginny, calls Prof. Anita Hill at her Brandeis University office and leaves a voice mail that apparently says, according to ABC News:
Continue Reading → Share“Good morning, Anita Hill. It’s Ginny Thomas. I just wanted to reach across the airwaves and the years and ask you to consider something. I would love you to ...
England has a TV show comparable to “American Idol” – you may even recognize one of the panelists . . . – called “Britain’s Got Talent.” One or two years ago they had a plain-looking middle-aged cell-phone salesman on, and everyone in the audience got ready for a good laugh, the lesser side of the societal bell curve. And then he sang:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEo5bjnJViA
Recently, a 47-year-old “plain-Jane” got on the stage, and you again perceive the audience and panel gearing ...
Continue Reading → ShareLast year, when voters in the Queens-Brooklyn Ninth Congressional District of New York elected Bob Turner, a solid Republican conservative, to the seat abandoned by disgraced Anthony Weiner, it marked a watershed moment in American Jewish history, as Orthodox Jews finally flexed some muscle alongside Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union. That seat had not left the Democrats since 1923, and it seems that Jewish voters have been liberal Democrat as long, if not longer.
Alongside African-Americans, Jewish Americans ...
The search for truth and understanding is not helped by searching endlessly for a Jewish angle in every cockamamie and outlier news event
In the aftermath of the tragic and evil shooting of United States Representative Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona, American Jewish news sources have entered the conversation by noting that Rep. Giffords is Jewish and that her attacker, Jared Lee Loughner, has associated with extremist hate groups. The suggestion: her tragedy is an act of anti-Semitism. I ...
Actually, of course, the toilet paper thing starts with the principle of not tearing. Tearing is (although sounding destructive) inherent in the construction process. Thus, tearing is not done on Shabbat.
There are exceptions, primarily with the permissibility of tearing food. Food packages may be torn open. On a related principle, toilet paper may be torn if there is no alternative. Human dignity is paramount. For example, one may tear toilet paper in a public facility (say, a hotel) while attending ...
Continue Reading → ShareLast week’s news was dominated by the deaths of three celebrities: Ed McMahon, who entered our homes as Johnny Carson’s sidekick, and later – we wished – as the man bearing the big check from Publisher’s Clearinghouse. Farrah Fawcett, whose pin-up poster sold 12 million copies and appeared in the dorm rooms of a generation, and whose hairstyle literally sent millions of American women to stylists asking to “look like Farrah.” And Michael Jackson, who was performing as a ...