Sharp words recently exchanged in the Jewish corners of the internet are extremely revealing about the challenges facing my friends in modern Orthodoxy. And they clarify why I am a heterodox, if generally traditional Jew. Rabbi Mordecai Willig, a senior figure at Yeshiva University, recently posted a d’var Torah in which he gave a full-throated […]

My comments on Operation Tzuk Eitan or “Mighty Cliff” (which appeared here as well as in Haaretz) triggered many positive responses, a couple of negative assessments from the right and one sharp negative response from a leading leftist blogger, Magnes Zionist. That writer, Prof. Charles Manekin, was seconded by a mutual friend of each of […]

Please have a look at a message I sent last week to Congregation Ansche Chesed, that is both about the Gaza situation, and about how American Jews struggle to understand its moral challenges.   Dear Friends, Two weeks into the current Gaza conflict, I may be the only American rabbi left who has not sent […]

As of this late date in November, 2013, I may be officially the last rabbi in America to blog about the Pew Research Center report on American Jews. Not that I’ve had nothing to say. I’ve just been listening for a while, trying to put it together. I will post a few items on the […]

It’s not every day that a Talmudic parable comes to life in an actual event. But so it seems to have happened this fall in New Haven, CT. As reported in the Orthodox blog Vos Is Neias and subsequently in the Forward, Rabbi Noach Muroff bought a desk on Craigslist, only to discover $98,000 hidden […]

Today is “a damp, drizzly November in my soul” … well, actually in my neighborhood. My own soul feels pretty good. But here in New York City, the weather is just as Melville describes on the first page of Moby Dick. And especially for my most vulnerable neighbors, November has been colder and more challenging, […]

This week, for the second time, I am undertaking the “SNAP challenge” of spending on food only the average daily benefit for those receiving food stamps (AKA the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program). Nationally, that benefit is $4.50 per person per day, and in New York State it is $4.92 per person per day. When budget […]

Hello friends, After a sabbatical from the synagogue and from “Honest to God” — although I hope not from honesty to God — I am returning to JCast Network and to this blog. It’s good to be back. Please give a gander and this next post, to follow anon.

This past Shabbat’s Torah section, Be’ha’alotekha, includes the famous description of Moses’ singular virtue [Numbers 12.3]: “This man Moses was very humble, more than any other human being on the face of the earth.” If anyone could justify a little vanity, maybe it would be the man whose face glowed with light because he came […]