Op-Eds

The title “rabbi” in Judaism does not, in fact, denote a leader of services and Torah reader. Rather, it denotes – you guessed it – a halachic authority and spiritual leader, which is exactly the title Rabbi Riskin conferred upon these three women.

Until now, Jews accepted the anomaly of Jews being permitted to build in Bethel, New York or Shiloh, Tennessee but not in the original Bethel or Shiloh.

President Trump has moved to bar facilities that provide abortions and abortion referrals from receiving federal Title X funding. The reaction of those decrying the president’s decision is revealing.

If you had thirty drunks with knives and hatchets trying to break down your front door and penetrate into your house, what would you do? Call John Kerry? Call Bette Midler? Natalie Portman?

Tzni’us, the Jewish ethos of modesty, has been under intense discussion recently. Do we need the traditional manifestations of established tzni’us or should we apply a general definition without them?

Professor Ferziger posits that “Emerging competitors to kosher food supervision monopolies in Israel and the United States present an economic threat that could bring about fundamental changes in contemporary Orthodox Judaism in each of these centers of Jewish life”. For numerous reasons, the new competitors are profoundly unlikely to alter the larger identity of Orthodoxy..

In his recent op-ed on Arutz Sheva, “Open Orthodox Rabbi” Shmuly Yanklowitz helps unpeel one thin layer of the onion that explains why “Open Orthodoxy” is alien to Orthodox Judaism. For that reason, his article served an important purpose.

Rabbi Yanklowitz does not mention that in another recent article he calls for a kind of disengagement of US Jews from Israel. Accusing Israel falsely of moral failure is a way for him to try to justify that appalling suggestion.

No one has “forbidden women from teaching Torah.” No one has refused to “value the voices of women teaching Torah.” And no one promotes an ethos to “exclude women’s voices.” The accusations do not apply to the facts on the ground.

Juxtaposed against the American system of naturalization — its 3-5-year waiting period, its uniformity across the fifty states, its imposition of higher standards demanded of outsiders versus blanket acceptance of those already “in” by accident of birth — the process of converting halakhically to Judaism is hardly surprising.