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Cross-Currents: A Solution Greater than the Problem
An Open Letter to Allison Josephs
As I am usually a fan of your work at Jew in the City, I am both surprised and dismayed with your latest piece. I feel that you don’t understand the agenda of the Women of the Wall, and have proposed a “soluti...
Dateline: 2013-05-24 1:45pm -07:00T (1318 words)
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Cross-Currents: Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory
A member of the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah of America once remarked to me that things would be going splendidly in our world were it not for our propensity to continually shoot ourselves in the foot. What took place at the Kosel on Rosh Chodesh Sivan provide...
Dateline: 2013-05-22 1:00pm -07:00T (1213 words)
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Cross-Currents: A Piece of the Wall
I really must avoid spicy foods – even my wife’s scrumptious jalapeno pepper-laced cornbread – before retiring at night. The recipe’s great, but for someone approaching 60, it’s a recipe, too, for indigestion-fueled nightmares.
The scene: the ...
Dateline: 2013-05-21 8:30am -07:00T (688 words)
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Cross-Currents: Infestation Inspiration
The thought, a staple in the writings of the celebrated Jewish thinker Rabbi E. E. Dessler (1892-1953), is best known to people unfamiliar with his thought and writings from a famous and evocative paragraph written by Ralph Waldo Emerson.
“If the stars ...
Dateline: 2013-05-13 2:15pm -07:00T (857 words)
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Cross-Currents: Shavuos: Yom HaDin For Bloggers?
The Shalah HaKadosh’s take on Shavuos would appear to be tailor-made for those who hang around the blogosphere, whether as authors or consumers. His idea might strike some terror in the hearts of some of us, which would not be a bad idea. Citing the Tol...
Dateline: 2013-05-12 2:00am -07:00T (155 words)
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Cross-Currents: Political Provocation Not Welcome
When a “movement” has more media appearances than members, do we notice something amiss? When a group claiming to favor prayer calls for dismantling a place of worship, do we smell smoke? And when leaders of an organization demand “Ahava...
Dateline: 2013-05-10 12:00pm -07:00T (541 words)
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Cross-Currents: Jerusalem, City of Unity
by Moshe Hauer
This week the Jewish world will celebrate the 46th anniversary of the liberation and reunification of Jerusalem in the Six Day War. This miraculous event restored unity to the city that symbolizes Jewish unity, described by the Psalmist as ...
Dateline: 2013-05-09 7:15pm -07:00T (1189 words)
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Cross-Currents: Understanding the “Other”
It’s a story I tell a lot, since, well, its point comes up a lot. Blessedly, my audience, at least judging from its response, hadn’t heard it before.
The psychiatrist asks the new patient what the problem is. “I’m dead,” he confides earnestly,...
Dateline: 2013-05-07 6:45pm -07:00T (859 words)
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Cross-Currents: Cutting Edge Teshuvos
We routinely turn away contributors of “pure” halacha and hashkafa pieces. Not that our regular contributors undervalue them. To the contrary, I believe that every one of our authors consider pure Torah pieces more valuable than any of our blogging ac...
Dateline: 2013-05-03 1:45am -07:00T (1933 words)
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Cross-Currents: Lessons from the Talmud
The Talmud in Eruvin [47b-48a] discusses the unusual case of a lake situated between two villages, such that each end of the lake is within the Sabbath limits of one or the other village. Because the water mixes, and thus someone who goes out and draws wa...
Dateline: 2013-05-01 2:45pm -07:00T (344 words)
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Cross-Currents: Outside/Inside
A discomfiting feeling crept over me as I watched the fellow remove his head.
Well, not his head – though that would have been discomfiting too, even more so. This was just a costume head, that of the Sesame Street character Cookie Monster. The scene:...
Dateline: 2013-04-30 5:30pm -07:00T (778 words)
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Cross-Currents: Target (Mal)Practice
Some unwarranted criticism that was lobbed last week at several Orthodox writers greatly disturbed this one.
The target of one volley – though the shots widely missed their mark – was Rabbi Jonathan Rosenblum, one of the preeminent representatives of ...
Dateline: 2013-04-23 11:00am -07:00T (972 words)
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Cross-Currents: Women For the Wall
I’ve never hidden my disdain for the “Women of the Wall,” and with Anat Hoffman’s new “compromise” proposal to rip down the Mechitzah on a daily basis, that’s not about to change any time soon.
A woman I’ve ...
Dateline: 2013-04-19 1:30pm -07:00T (90 words)
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Cross-Currents: When Sincerity Is Not Enough
Two weeks ago, we read in Parshas Shemini how on the day of the dedication of the Mishkan, Nadav and Avihu, sons of Aharon Hakohein, brought a “strange fire in front of Hashem” and were consumed by a “fire that went forth from before Hashem.” Targ...
Dateline: 2013-04-18 10:45am -07:00T (1394 words)
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Cross-Currents: Savage Ignorance
It’s difficult to know whether shock-jock Michael Savage is in fact the actual person whose Bronx-accented ranting emanates daily from radios across the country, or whether that voice belongs to an adopted persona, a cantankerous, rude and hilariously s...
Dateline: 2013-04-16 10:30am -07:00T (721 words)
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