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Jun 12, 2025, 9:18 AM

Not My Enemy: Responding to Galit Distel Atbaryan

This week, a disturbing moment unfolded in the Knesset. During a committee session, Likud MK Galit Distel Atbaryan interrupted Reform Rabbi and Knesset member Gilad Kariv, telling him: "Remove the Reformist, the Jews here want to continue." The implication...

Ruthie Hollander

Jun 5, 2025, 8:29 PM

When Judaism is uncompromising, it hurts

Ruthie in high school. Photo courtesy of the author.

At the beginning of each school year, we signed a handbook. In it were the guidelines we agreed to live by if we wanted to stay enrolled and out of trouble: No unsupervised internet. No movie theaters. Modest clothing...

Michael Feldstein

May 25, 2025, 10:45 PM

Baruch Lanner and the Story That Finally Exposed Him

Baruch Lanner

It’s hard to believe, but exactly 25 years have passed since the publication of “Stolen Innocence.” Researched and written by Gary Rosenblatt, then editor and publisher of The Jewish Week, this explosive article outlined years of sexual abuse of...

Joseph C. Kaplan

May 16, 2025, 6:16 AM

Our Most Precious Right – Part II

Last week I wrote about several issues that have caused me to feel alienated and lonely in national and local arenas (“Trump, Ben-Gvir, and my Vanished Abode”). This week I add several to the list. Almost five years ago, I...

May 9, 2025, 12:19 PM

Zara, are you listening? Sweating the sweater

By the time you’ve had four daughters finish eighth grade at yeshiva day school, you’d think you’d know what they need to wear for graduation picture day. So when the moms of my fifth daughter’s friends asked for my expertise,...

Joseph C. Kaplan

May 9, 2025, 12:26 AM

Trump, Ben-Gvir, and my Vanished Abode

I don’t like Donald Trump. I don’t like him as a human being. He’s mean, cruel, petty, vain, bullying, intimidating, uncaring, and non-empathetic. He replaces reasoned disagreement with insults and needs to study Exodus 23:7 carefully. To get an idea...

Steven Greenberg

May 7, 2025, 4:51 PM

Senior rabbis shouldn’t quit Yeshiva University over a gay club on campus

A pedestrian on the campus of Yeshiva University in New York City on August 30, 2022. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images/File)

When YU leadership maligns these students, it shows how poorly it understands these young men, their commitment to Torah, and their need for support

May 5, 2025, 10:49 PM

The Need to Build a Culture of Constant Israel Advocacy

There is an important and under-discussed topic in the Orthodox community that needs to be brought to attention. Israel advocacy should not and cannot only be a reaction to crisis. As observant Jews, Israel advocacy, along with Torah study...

Apr 4, 2025, 9:03 AM

Book Review: Shabbat Guidebook for Parents

Book Review: Shabbat Guidebook for Parents, Rabbanit Alissa Thomas-Newborn We are told (Yoma 83b) that the Tana R. Meir was דורש שמות: He would assign significance to people’s names, seeing them as more than mere monikers. Names, he believed, are like...

Michael Feldstein

Mar 26, 2025, 4:24 AM

Orthodoxy is Thriving on the Upper East Side

For several decades, post-college singles and young married who wanted to live in New York City mostly flocked to the Upper West Side, which had several synagogues in the area and a plethora of kosher restaurants nearby. An Orthodox...

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