• Why We Need a Reversion of Conversion

    while back I sent a certain Orthodox rabbi a link to Rabbi Marc Angel’s article about conversion which appeared in the Forward http://www.forward.com/articles/11985/ in which Rabbi Angel argues quoting former chief Sephardic Rabbi Uziel, that we should err on the side of accepting converts rather than rejecting them and criticizes the high barriers the Chief Rabbinate of…

  • More on Rav Samet’s Yeshivah in Lod and the Creativity of Talmud Study

    January 15, 2010 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…

  • The Importance and Value of Creativity in Talmud Study

    I and my family are living in Israel for the next 5 months on sabbatical.  Though we are living in Jerusalem I commute each day to the city of Lod to learn torah in the kollel of Rabbi Israel Samet.  It is a small group of mostly young married men who have finished their army…

  • Unwittingly Desecrating G-d’s Name

    How should we act as Orthodox Jews? Today I was talking to a congregant who told me that her in-laws who are Reform and not observant, asked her why Orthodox Jews are badly mannered.   They said, “so and so’s son became a baal tishuvah (newly observant) and now he is mean to, and rejecting of,…

  • Takes Many Spiritual Tools to Connect to an Infinite God

    On Prayer and Meditation My first post on Morethodoxy, entitled “Openness and Passion,” outlined what I perceive to be an important process in living the Torah, being able to adopt the strengths one finds in each community and in the so many different approaches to mitzvoth and Torah, even if they are not our own…