Why don’t Orthodox Jews in America act violently against women who are not dressed modestly, while some in Israel do?   There are to my knowledge almost no such outbursts in the USA, whereas in Israel we read about them quite often, such as this week  http://www.jta.org/news/article/2011/12/27/3090916/israelis-rally-around-naama-women    In fact the attitude of even right…

Close to a million Israelis live in countries other than Israel. The majority have settled in the United States and Canada for the long run, teaching at universities, running business, and becoming entrepreneurs. Most identify as secular and send their children to public schools. Although they maintain a vague Israeli identity, most of the children…

I feel terrible for the people of Gaza.  They live under the rule of a violent oppressor.  But their oppressor is not Israel, it is Hamas, a terrorist entity whose very name means anger and whose actions seem to so revolve around war and hatred, that they cannot spend adequate money, time, or effort on the welfare…

The recent (now tabled)  bill submitted to the Kenesset by MK Rotem expands the range of whom under law in Israel has the authority to perform conversions, and in addition severely limits anyone’s ability to retroactively undo a conversion performed in Israel.   The bill was formulated by Israel Baytenu, a non-religious party, to facilitate the…

Although in the modern Orthodox community it is not PC to admit this, I am not a Zionist.   I did not grow up feeling or being taught that Israel, in the modern sense of the term, was essential for the Jews or for being Jewish.  I was taught that though Israel is a holy land,…

Last week I wrote that it seemed from the torah that the goal of the Jewish people to be a “blessing to all the peoples of the world” as God tells Abraham, can only happen by going to the “land which I will show you,” and there becoming a “great nation.”  Why is it that…

In a recent Jerusalem post article rabbi Daniel Gordis wrote that in his view there is no creativity in the torah of religious Zionism and that indeed since rabbi Solovetchik and rabbi kook there has not been any.   As a result he does not feel that religious Zionism is able to speak to secular Jews…

There are several Torah scholars who derive creative philosophical, psychological, and quite modern thoughts from the Tanach and Midrash.  Among these authors is most notably Aviva Zorenberg, and I think she herself would argue, the Midrash itself.  There are also those commentaries that take the same approach to Agaditah, the narrative sections of the Talmud. …

What Tzohar is doing to engage non-observant Israeli Jews and is there such a thing as Religious Zionist P’sak (jewish legal decisions) I spent the past week in Israel at a meeting of Tzohar Rabbis.  Tzohar is an organization of several hundred rabbis, mostly Israeli, who want to create a “window between worlds,” -between the…

Did you go to yshivat charedi?  All in usa? I embarrassed they learned much more than me Lawyer named yaakov I and my family are in Israel for the next 5 months on sabbatical.  Though we are living in Jerusalem I commuttee each day to the city of lod to learn torah in the kollel…