On one level, one could not help but be impressed by the intensity and earnestness at Aish Hatorah, circa 1983, of young people devoting themselves…
New Paths for Ba'alei Teshuva, Part 2
In early 1982, I began to study something called "The 48 Ways of Wisdom" one night a week. This was a series of classes based on…
What We Talk About When We Talk About War
In this, what was the summer of our discontent, it is worth looking at the words that were commonly used to moralize about the present war. At the…
New Paths for Ba'alei Teshuva: Part One
This series of blog posts seeks to discuss, if only preliminarily, the journey of ba’alei teshuvah (loosely defined as those who were not raised in a…
Our Days Are Numbered
Mark Steyn put it quite simply in America Alone: “Experts talk about root causes. But demography is the most basic root of all.” Prognostications…
The Open Society
In his groundbreaking book, The Heretical Imperative, Professor Peter Berger argued that modernity—and its emphasis on freedom of choice—has…
Authenticity
Sin gets bad press these days, because it is experienced as a guest that brings a whole slew of unwelcome associates into the house--guilt, bad…
Preparing to Die, Learning to Live
Dear Sir, Thank you for your recent inquiry regarding the upcoming High Holidays. You want to know why it is that people who…
The Silence of Eternity
Education, Mark Twain once quipped, consists mainly in what we have unlearned. For a great many Jews today, shul is a kind of ponderous opera, taking…
Jewish Spirituality in Our Time
The philosopher Thomas Molnar states that at present, religion is accepted and even flourishes, but only as a kind of "psychic weekend from too much…
High Holiday Synagogue Blues
Rosh Hashanah, Day of Judgment, Book of Life and Death, flocks of sheep passing before the Creator. But the kids are saying, "Do we really have to go…
We Are All Falling
Our lives do not follow a straight line. They turn and then turn again. This re-turn (known in Jewish tradition as teshuvah, also translated as…