2015-01-14

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…

2015-01-13

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…

2014-09-11

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…

2012-06-14

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…

2012-05-06

Mark Steyn put it quite simply in America Alone: “Experts talk about root causes. But demography is the most basic root of all.” Prognostications…

2012-04-30

In his groundbreaking book, The Heretical Imperative, Professor Peter Berger argued that modernity—and its emphasis on freedom of choice—has…

2012-04-29

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…

2011-10-05

  Dear Sir,    Thank you for your recent inquiry regarding the upcoming High Holidays. You want to know why it is that people who…

2011-09-25

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…

2011-09-21

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…

2011-09-21

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…

2011-09-15

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…