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Kingdom of Priests

Would Pope Benedict accept an invitation to edit the next speech given by Israeli former chief rabbi Israel Meir Lau? No, I don’t think he would. It would be beneath his dignity.  Yet when Benedict comes to Israel and speaks at Yad Vashem in memory of victims of the Holocaust, Rabbi Lau, who is chairman of the Yad…

With Mother’s Day approaching, I’m busy appreciating the Mothers’ Conspiracy that’s been responsible for my own children’s having a fighting chance of passing on Jewish values to their children and grandchildren. I call it a Jewish conspiracy because a spiritual chain had been broken in my family — that is, my family by adoption — as…

Over at the interesting website Beyond Teshuva, devoted to issues raised by Jews returning from secularism to Judaism, Kressel Housman comes “out of the closet” as…a liberal. As someone “raised on liberal values,” she reflects: I know liberalism is unpopular in frum [religious] circles, and I know there are good reasons for it. Israel is number one,…

A function of this blog is correcting mistaken views about Judaism held by Jews. The same reader comment that prompted me to declare myself guilty of being “Christian-friendly” also castigated Eric Cohen of the Ethics and Public Policy Center for having written on National Review Online that: On the stem-cell question, the conscience of Judaism has…

The JTA reports — a mikveh in Montana of all places, can you imagine? Kosher Jewish marriage is impossible without one. Chabad is sniped at a lot in Jewish life, quite unfairly. Yet who else would accomplish such a thing? No one. First mikveh in Montana opensMay 7, 2009 (JTA) — The state of Montana has…

Jews are funny. Responding to my post on a certain strain even in Orthodox Judaism that resists accepting the implications of our being in exile, galut, a reader shot back that I must be some kind of Uncle Tom since I, a supposed Orthodox Jew, am associated with the “Christian-friendly” Discovery Institute.  I get this…

Miriam Shaviv has a fascinating book review in the Forward on the Spanish “Jewish Christians” or “Marranos” who, up until the expulsion from Spain in 1492, accepted baptism and outward life as Christians while maintaining a secret, internal loyalty to Judaism. They did this under the threat of intense persecution. Some practiced Jewish rituals in secret. Others…

Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of sympathy for the team of Orthodox Jewish high school students who are suing to compete in a national mock trial competition. The team from the Maimonides School in Brookline, Mass., won their state championship and thus the privilege of competing in the national contest in Atlanta this weekend.…

I love a really good teshuva (repentance) story, telling how a Jew found his way up from secularism to Judaism. One of the most fascinating I’ve read is posted on the First Things website today, by David P. Goldman (a/k/a Spengler), who passed through a period as an acolyte of cult leader Lyndon LaRouche. Goldman…

It can be a bit of a dilemma. I take down defamatory comments when I catch them — e.g., from the guy who hides behind religious-sounding pseudonyms but wants to use the combox to defame other people by name and then calls me a “coward” for deleting him. I want normal people of whatever view…
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