Jake Fradkin, at The Blogs

Jun 13, 2022, 7:35 PM

The paradox of Pride Month: Should we be demanding acceptance?

JERUSALEM, ISRAEL: Israeli gay activists fill a downtown street during the gay pride parade June 21, 2007 in Jerusalem. Some 3,500 people marched about 500 meters down a central Jerusalem street in the much-contested parade as about 8,000 Israeli police protected them from threats by ultra-Orthodox Jews to disrupt the march. (Photo by David Silverman/Getty Images)

Do we have a right to demand respect and acceptance? We learn the following teaching in Pirkei Avot: Ben Zoma said… who is honored? He who honors his fellow human beings (Pirkei Avot 4:1). Respect and honor are earned through giving...

May 30, 2022, 11:56 PM

Yerushalayim, Shavuot, and Our Unique Historical Imperative

At the end of the Six Day War, Israeli soldiers hug and kiss the stones of the Western Wall, Old City of Jerusalem, Israel, June 11, 1967. (Photo by Dan Porges/Getty Images)

In his book Orthodoxy, Christian theologian G.K. Chesterton writes: “Tradition means giving a vote to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant...

Apr 17, 2022, 2:49 PM

Homosexuality and Torah: A Personal Look at Acharei Mot

An Israeli man wears a rainbow a kippa, the traditional Jewish skullcap for men, during the annual Gay Pride march in Jerusalem on July 21, 2016.
Israeli police said they suspected the man behind the attack on last year's march, Yishai Shlissel, an ultra-Orthodox Jew who killed a teenager and stabbed five other people, had been in contact with his brother from prison about an assault on the event. / AFP / THOMAS COEX (Photo credit should read THOMAS COEX/AFP via Getty Images)

(״ואת-זכר לא תשכב משכבי אשה תועבה הוא״ (ויקרא יח:כב “Do not lie with a male as one lies with a woman; it is an abomination.” (Leviticus 18:22) I cannot describe how it feels to hear these words, written in our Torah,...

Jun 24, 2019, 11:02 AM

AOC & the De-Judaization of the Holocaust

A group of child survivors behind a barbed wire fence at the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau in southern Poland, on the day of the camp’s liberation by the Red Army, 27th January 1945. Photo taken by Red Army photographer Captain Alexander Vorontsov during the making of a film about the liberation of the camp. The children were dressed in adult uniforms by the Russians. The children are (left to right): Tomy Schwarz (later Shacham), Miriam Ziegler, Paula Lebovics (front), Ruth Webber, Berta Weinhaber (later Bracha Katz), Erika Winter (later Dohan), Marta Weiss (later Wise), Eva Weiss (later Slonim), Gabor Hirsch (just visible behind Eva Weiss), Gabriel Neumann, Robert Schlesinger (later Shmuel Schelach), Eva Mozes Kor, and Miriam Mozes Zeiger. (Photo by Alexander Vorontsov/Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images)

Freshman Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D- NY) has generated controversy after referring to migrant detention camps along the U.S. southern border as “concentration camps” while employing the Holocaust phrase "Never Again". Although many media figures have attempted to hold...

About Me

Jake Fradkin is an incoming student at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He previously learned at both Yeshivat Orayta and Yeshivat Torah V'Avodah in Yerushalayim. Having grown up in a secular Jewish home in New Jersey, Jake developed a passion for Judaism, Torah, and Zionism.

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