Jewish Ethics

Our gedolim are constantly confronted with issues involving the unwritten fifth section of Shulchan Aruch. Many of those issues require balancing a particular Torah ideal against the state of Torah society b'asher hu sham .

Lessons from the Grave

Shame is one of the characteristics by which Klal Yisrael is distinguished. But it has atrophied over the generations.

Environmental consciousness is not yet high on the chareidi educational agenda.

In ruling that the death penalty may not be imposed in even the most serious cases of child rape, Justice Kennedy purported to be giving voice to the "evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society."

The Golubchuk case, while not about "brain death" (which even the hospital admitted had not occurred), demonstrates how precarious any form of "religious exemption" might prove to be.

An awareness of the potential ramifications of everything we do makes us more alive, thinking beings.

If we ever hope to find a decree of unity in joy, lets try and draw closer in happiness.

Freedom is a necessary condition for all Divine Services.

Man and Beast

What happens if we teach our children what to do, without at the same time developing their ability to excercise their free will as conscious, thinking Jews?

Ethnic identity is nothing more than an attenuated connection to the essence fo what it means to be a Jew

Wonderful organisations of today that do not make it to the radar screen of major benefactors.

The impact of declining sense of responsiblity to one's felow Jews is being felt within American Jewry

He knew that if everything were forbidden, then everything would ultimately be permitted.

The benefits of proper chinuch are long-lasting, while those of coercion can vanish into thin air.

Our tragedy today is that we have too few students of the Chazon Ish – too few extremists in his mold and too many “from before Mattan Torah.”

Beyond the rowdiness, the vulgarity, the heedlessness of the image of Israel and Jews that they would leave behind, it is that rejection and alienation from their own past that arouses the most pity and disgust with the behavior of Israeli teens in Poland

The Jewish customs of mourning provided me with structure for that first year without Dad.

It was ridiculous to expect rabbis committed to halacha to find some sort of magic fairy-dust to sprinkle on close to half a million non-Jewish immigrants from the FSU, and how unjustified are all the slurs against them for failing to do so.

The kinds of activities in which these volunteers, mainly yeshivah bochurim, are engaged in during the course of the week during their off-hours, sets them apart.

Israel can lay down any criteria it wants for citizenship - e.g. service in the IDF. But it has no right to conflate citizenship with being a Jew.

This week we will discuss the dangers of too much praise. (Again we are drawing on the research summarized in a February 19 New York Magazine article entitled "How Not to Talk to Your Kids.")

Teaching kids that effort makes a difference turns out to be one of the most important educational lessons.

A February 14 piece in New York Magazine, "How Not to Talk to Your Kids" by Po Bronson, describes the work of Stanford professor C. Dweck, who has spent the last ten years investigating the impact of different educational messages on children.

For progressive Jews, totally convinced of their own absolute righteousness and Israel's absolute evil, any effort at refutation of their hyperbolic charges, can only be seen as part of a conspiratorial effort to silence speakers of the truth.

On believers and empiricism

Recently two groups of askanim – one in Jerusalem and one in Bnei Brak -- addressed themselves to the plague of tragedies involving the loss of parents of young children, often after long and agonizing illnesses.

In a contemporary context, Rabbi Dessler remarked that those who deny the possibility of free will do so because by failing to develop their own willpower through the positive exercise of their free will they have lost their freedom.

The Price of Deception

Why are religious people more generous?

Religious people of all denominations are more generous than non-religious.

Saddam, the Pope and Ahmadinjead

A Time to Hate

So why do I nevertheless feel some small measure of satisfaction at news of his execution. The answer to that lies in the Torah view of nekamah (vengeance), as explained by the late Mirrer Rosh Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Shmulevitz in his Sichos Mussar.

I wanted to understand why those who are often open about their loathing of Jews, and free with Nazi-like theories of racial contamination, are so keen to deny the Holocaust rather than embrace it.

The only question that remains is: How could so many intelligent men say so many patently silly things? For Dawkins, the answer would no doubt be one of those evolutionary "misfires," such as that to which he attributes religious belief.

The very existence of Israel (which whatever its virtues or failings is home to nearly half of all Jews living today) has become in the eyes of much of the world a big bother.

How did what started as a handful of private chesed endeavors by one couple develop into Yad Eliezer? As with Rabbi Myski, the only answer is: siyata d’shamaya. But that kind of siyata d’shmaya does not come to everyone.

Ever notice how many ridiculous assertions, many of them touching on matters of religion, are printed in serious journals weekly?

When Rabbi Lorincz next saw the Chazon Ish, the latter shared his cardinal rule for any public speech: “Before a person speaks, he must know what he hopes to achieve with his words.”

The lifetime habit of viewing each situation through the lens of “What’s in it for me?” corrupted our leaders thought processes and left them unable to focus exclusively on national objectives.

The print and electronic media conspire to convince the public that sexual relations are at once the be-all and end-all of life and no more significant than any other physical act, such as brushing one's teeth.

How we combat the threat of annihilation inherent in next month’s “celebration of deviancy” in Jerusalem remains for the gedolei Torah to decide. But all of us must be very clear as to the magnitude of the danger.

Beware that conclusions of supposedly objective scientists are often heavily tainted by their prior biases.

Evolutionary psychology, it turns out, is not only silly but dangerous.

It is time to stop teaching our children that science has answered all the questions and eliminated God from the cosmos.

That scientists are willing to engage in such wild speculations, only shows how deeply engrained is their bias in favor of purely natural causes.

The equation of Saddam's execution, after trial, to his crimes is on a par with those pat moral equivalencies so beloved of Left intellectuals during the Cold War - Soviet imperialism vs the cultural imperialism of Hollywood.

Michael Steinhardt is a very generous man, who cares deeply about the future of the Jewish people. But there are a lot better targets for his expressions of despair than the Orthodox.

I know that there were a few other insights that I wanted to take this opportunity to share. But I forgot what they were. Perhaps I am old enough to be a Zaide after all.

the modern American yeshiva has had to take on a completely new function. It is not only a Mishkan, but also Noach's Ark a place of refuge from the pernicious influences of the surrounding society.

But for sheer determination to torment a religious organization and arouse religious hatred, IRAC's efforts to prevent the building of religious center by Rabbi Tzvi Schwartz of Rechovot cannot be topped.

If we have taught our children to see the world as filled with examples of human goodness, and to find the beauty in everyday life, they have a much better chance of coping with even the most overwhelming tragedy without being destroyed by it.

A movement calling itself "Jewish," comes to encourage abortions, something halachah views, in most cases, as a form of murder

It is clear that only a certain type of society can produce a Yacov Tabak, and that another type of society will produce mostly Michael Schiavo's.

Only by seeking to apply our Torah knowledge to every aspect of our lives can we make the Torah part of us and not something that remains forever external.

Why did G-d want hundreds of thousands of people to die in Southeast Asia?

. Jews, however, know that Hashem is also guiding the world towards its ultimate fulfillment, and that His Will is to shower as much of His Good upon us.

Even though we cannot remain unmoved by hearing the tragic news of last week, absent prophecy we have, at most, a glimmer of what is demanded of us.

We will do all that our gedolim have commanded us with respect to cell phones.

The new SHUVU school in Kfar Saba demonstrates that secular Israelis are interested in a school in which children can study in a violence free environment while learning to talk with respect to their parents and becoming more familiar with their Judaism.

Looking at the societal breakdown around us, Torah parents rightly pride themselves on an educational system that gives them the confidence and authority to be parents.

Apology to sociologist Samuel Heilman

Senator Brownback's visit

Senator Brownback's speech

For the tens of millions of devout Christians, who are America’s most ardent supporters of Israel, the more Jewish Israel is, and the more modern Israelis are identified with the Jews of the Bible, the greater their support for Israel.

Freedom and its enemies

Liberty, not libertinism

There cannot be any one model in education because every child is different, with his own individual destiny.

Only the gedolei hador can tell us to what extent we have to adapt and to what extent we should ignore the threats.

Bans on the sale of pork are as much an expression of Jewish national identity as of religious identity.

Sympathy on the passing of such tyrants as the Hussein boys is a form of misplaced mercy, and a lack of basic human empathy.

Mayor Lupolianski must work together with the mainstream haredi community and the police to ensure that the Shabbat violence comes to a halt. He must do so not just to save his mayoralty, but, far more importantly, to preserve the honor of the Torah.

It would take a lot more than removing a few salacious magazines from Wal-Mart’s to reverse the loss of our awareness of ourselves as beings created in the Divine image.

Ilan Ramon chose to be something more than an isolated individual and to identify with the collective Jewish people throughout history. That was the source of the Kiddush Hashem that came through him, and why his memory deserves to be honored by al

Is the Chareidi press good for us?

Conservatism's view that G-d is not intimately involved in the running of the world is not the Torah view

The current expression given to Israelis' search for spirituality are more likely to lead away from G-d than to Him

A discussion of Jewish chosenness and its personal ramifications

The syncretic spirituality of New Age celebrations has nothing to do with Shavuot

Jonathan Rosenblum responds to Amotz As-el's assertion that "the costs of being chosen (by G-d) have been higher then the benefits.

When is the past really past

How a group of elementary school boys achieved perfection

The consequences of separating sex from love.

For women to wear tallitot is nothing more than pagan ritual

Refutation of Naomi Ragen's report on the agunah problem

Today's youth has grown up so fast that it doesn't view marriage as something to look forward to

On the development of English literature revealing deeper facets of the Torah, a close look at Jeremy Kagan's "The Jewish Self"

The only route to happiness is inner growth

We are all leaders in some sense

We are all leaders in some sense

Judging Favorably- Lashon Hara Kenes

Our eagerness to be easy on Clinton partakes of our own desire to view ourselves as good fellows without devoting much effort to actually becoming good people

Haredim are viewed as an insurance policy for a state whose existence is under threat

Impressions of Siyum Hashas

The Jewish response to tragedy

Cultural relativism is actually the contrary of moral progress

The contortions made by those attempting to deny G-d

Observations of Shemiras Halashon Kenes