http://www.cross-currents.com A Journal of Jewish Thought and Opinion Sun, 11 May 2008 19:39:44 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Below I share with you (with very minor changes) the e-mail letter I sent today to Dina Kraft, a JTA reporter, responding to her article on the JTA website regarding the controversy over the ruling of an Israeli beis din revoking a conversion performed many years ago. I hope to ... http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2008/05/09/this-is-war-or-at-least-a-strenuous-disagreement/ Stephen Schwarzman is a very wealthy man. And a very generous one. The CEO and co-founder of The Blackstone Group, a New York investment bank, recently made the largest unrestricted gift to any New York cultural institution: $100 million, to the New York Public Library. Mr. Schwarzman may well ... http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2008/05/09/jewish-wealths/ Just before Pesach, the front pages of all Israel's major papers were filled for days with three cases of horrific child abuse. In two of the cases, some of the children involved will likely never recover from their physical injuries, and it is hard to imagine the emotional injuries ever ... http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2008/05/08/in-praise-of-normalcy/ In the space of a single hour this evening, I heard: The former President of the most populous Muslim country on the globe declare that he will not rest until his country recognizes Israel. He then dedicated the honor he received to an unnamed rabbi (in Indonesia!), deceased for a ... http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2008/05/07/not-everything-is-bleak/ Does the deeply-seated need for revenge mean that we are trapped between two approaches, each of which is unsatisfactory? On the one hand, acting upon our instinctive need plunges us into unending cycles of retaliation. On the other, the rule of law seems to demand the suppression of ... http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2008/05/06/better-than-revenge/ Boxing may be dead but those who still savor the sight of heavyweights throwing roundhouse punches at a fast and furious pace could do worse than the current donnybroook between Justice Minister Daniel Friedmann and former Supreme Court President Aharon Barak. The verbal fisticuffs between the two – like ... http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2008/05/04/terrified-of-judicial-reform/ My pre-Pesach column "Five-Star Pesach" generated, as expected, a larger than usual number of responses. The issue is a hot-button one for many. One friend wrote that going away to a hotel allowed him to spend most of his week in the beis medrash, a luxury he would not have had ... http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2008/05/02/pesach-hotels-a-second-look/ Even before Senator Barack Obama unequivocally denounced Reverend Jeremiah Wright as the loon he is, I was willing to take the senator’s word for the fact that his erstwhile pastor’s rantings about America, the Middle-East, the September 11 attacks, Louis Farrakhan, AIDS and white people do not reflect Mr. Obama’s ... http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2008/05/02/the-wright-stuff/ This is the time of year when even the non-kabbalist becomes aware of one of the most important notions in modern kabbalah – the ten sefiros. Every day of sefiras ha-omer, another combination of the seven “lower” sefiros stares out at you from the siddur. You get forty-nine ... http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2008/04/24/sefirah-sefiros-and-getting-g-d-wrong/ Most communal rabbis find that Pesach is the time of year that generates more questions from congregants than any other. This year, amid the usual (important, but easily answered) ‘how do I kasher my oven?’, ‘may I take my regular medication?’ and ‘is product x reliable?’, three questions stood ... http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2008/04/23/pesach-questions-5768/ This time Tzippi Livni got it exactly right. "Davka because I am not a religious person, I want to preserve something in Tel Aviv that symbolizes the Chag; something in the public square that does not coerce anyone to do anything or refrain from doing anything in the privacy of ... http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2008/04/18/why-the-chametz-law-matters/ Funerary orators often begin their remarks by relating how they are at a loss for words to properly express their feelings. I don’t have that problem The thoughts and images cascade without end in reacting to the petirah of my rebbi, Hagaon Rav Alter Henoch Leibowitz, zt”l. ... http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2008/04/17/moreinu-rav-henoch-leibowitz-zt%e2%80%9dl-reflections-from-outside-the-inner-circle/ Bnei Brak collaborates with Hollywood, and the result is a winner! If preparations for Pesach are draining your energy, take a six minute break and watch this. You won't be disappointed. Turning up the volume will increase the adrenalin - and the pride. [Thanks to Michael Eisenberg, Esq., Los Angeles] http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2008/04/16/great-mood-setter-for-sippur-yetzias-mitzrayim/ What better time to contemplate the state of the Jewish people today than on the eve of our birth as a nation on Pesach? (I shall confine myself to the state of the Jewish people in Eretz Yisrael.) The immediate external threats to the Jews of Eretz Yisrael -- well-armed proxies ... http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2008/04/16/only-one-lifeboat/ 11 bNissan I have been searching the internet for the prayer to say upon eating bread on Pessah, and I found it by Googling “zachor Michlalah movies.” There you can see/hear the late Reb Yonah Emanuel who was a teenage inmate in Bergen-Belsen ... http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2008/04/15/the-prayer-for-bread-on-passover/ The Rosh Hayeshiva of Yeshivas Chofetz Chaim, Horav Hagaon Rav Henoch Leibowitz, zecher tzaddik l'vrocha, has passed away. The funeral is scheduled to take place at Yeshivas Chofetz Chaim, 76-01 147th Street in Kew Garden Hills, at 1:30PM on Wednesday. Rav Leibowitz was a Rosh Yeshiva for over 60 years, inspiring ... http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2008/04/15/baruch-dayan-haemes-2/ A symposium on the compatibility of science and belief reminds us of the power of the Seder night. The Templeton Foundation is committed to supporting rigorous academic exploration of what it calls “spiritual realities,” and is generally G-d friendly, without shying away from hard questions. It’s current “conversation” shows up ... http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2008/04/14/of-questions-answers-and-questions/ The very word הגדה (Haggadah) conjures up wonderful memories of Sedarim past, reliving the story of the Exodus with family, friends and students. It’s used to refer colloquially to the booklet -- a compilation of texts and commentaries -- read at the Seder, but the word itself actually contains ... http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2008/04/14/haggadah-two-views/ It is not only the Torah’s words that hold multiple layers of meaning. So do those of the Talmudic and Midrashic Sages – even the words of the prayers and rituals they formulated. Such passages have their p’shat, or straightforward intent. But they also have less obvious layers, ... http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2008/04/11/the-four-answers/ In one of my first posts to Cross-Currents I discussed the pros and cons of attending singles events on Shabbos and Yom Tov. I suggested that Shabbos and Yom Tov need to be ends in themselves and not just means to some other end, even the laudable objective of ... http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2008/04/11/means-and-ends-part-2-mazal-tov-edition/ I will never forget an address by Rabbi Ephraim Wachsman at an Agudath Israel of America convention on the topic "Living a Life of Ruchnios amidst Gashmius." I had never before heard Rabbi Wachsman, and I practically jumped out of my seat when he thundered: This topic represents a fundamental ... http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2008/04/10/five-star-pesach/ by Rabbi Elchonon Oberstein As we approach the holiday of Pesach, our minds go back to the sedarim of our youth, when we were together with dear ones no longer alive. I have vivid memories of one Passover when my mild mannered father, who had nerves of steel, lost his ... http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2008/04/10/in-every-generation-passover-then-and-now/ The late William F. Buckley famously quipped that he’d rather be governed by the first one hundred people in the Boston phone book than by the first one hundred academics on the Harvard faculty roster. Confirmation for Buckley’s bon mot – if such was needed – now comes from ... http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2008/04/07/life-and-the-pursuit-of-grants-to-study-happiness/ What do Rav Isser Zalman Meltzer, Artscroll, and the RCA all have in common? They figured out that outsourcing was the key to intelligibility. Rav Isser Zalman gave a weekly shiur, for which he would intensely prepare. He was a stickler for clarity – end users of Even HaAzel ... http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2008/04/07/old-wine-new-containers/ My wife took one look at an advertisement in B'nai B'rith Magazine, and said "I see a post in your future." She was right. At first, I was tempted to offer the following as if such an ad had actually appeared in the Jewish Observer. But given the level of ... http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2008/04/06/bondage-of-the-mind/