My dear Schnook, As we both know, sin is an art, a way of life, a form of human expression on par with love in its depth and involvement. It is also, as is evident from my personal experience and from your letter, quite a difficult undertaking. Most people are so discouraged at the outset […]
My New Year’s Resolution Is To Make No Difference
I resolve, for the New Year, to not “make a difference.” I must accept what I cannot change and find the strength to change the things I can, to paraphrase a wise prayer. I will remember this year that strength is rarely measured in page views, Facebook likes, or marketing budgets. True strength is strength of character. […]
Dear Society: Stop Killing; Start Murdering
Murder. The word has a certain poetry to it, power and dark intention. We’ve lost faith in murder. Oh, we still value violence. When Hamas launches rockets or a new terror stirs in Iraq and Syria, we respond. Sometimes we preempt. If it’s kill or be killed, we know where we stand. We still (on […]
Enlightenment: Crude. Unsanitary. Ultra-Orthodox.
As every Jew knows, the religious ones are the rude ones. They jostle and shove and step on you and they’re not apologizing anytime soon. The first thing I ever saw in Meron on Lag Ba’omer, almost five years ago: a father slapped his son’s face so hard he pirouetted a full circle before bursting […]
Why Can’t A Nation Of Talmudists Write A Poem?
It’s funny that the same people that obsesses over a Tosfos can’t seem to warm up to poetry. The two forms are similar in their constrictions and have parallel goals, and both have historically been part of Judaism. What allows us to attack one with vigor, and never consider the other? 1. Talmudic Tribulations What’s […]
There’s a subreddit called “Uplifting News” that annoys me. It’s supposed to be an escape from the humdrum litany of murders, wars, etc. that is the news cycle; “There are still good, honest, compassionate people in this world and this is a place to share their stories,” says its description. Have some headlines from the […]
The Rebbe, The Chief Rabbi, and The Fossils
In the fall of 1987, the Chief Rabbi of Britain, Rabbi Lord Immanuel Jakobovits of blessed memory, engaged in a short correspondence about something the Lubavitcher Rebbe once wrote. The Chief Rabbi’s position was that, though well-stated and perfectly above-board, the Rebbe’s argument was “simplistic” (which Rabbi Jakobovits claimed is not at all in the […]
The year is 1877. Cornelius Vanderbilt and Brigham Young recently passed away, New Hampshire just became the last state to allow Jews to hold public office, and, on the other side of the world, in White Russia, Rabbi Shmuel of Lubavitch delivers a famous series of discourses on Chassidic thought. Your friend Richard walks into […]
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