Sit in judgment of others, as our sages teach “Don’t judge another man until you have stood in his place.” (Ethics of the Fathers) When they do that judging in public, as the Talmud says, “He who publicly shames his neighbor is as though he shed blood.” When they commit acts of fraud, as the […]

I first heard about Eric Kaplan, senior writer and producer at The Big Bang Theory (and author of the new humorous philosophy book “Does Santa Exist?”) several years ago from my friend and Partner in Torah Mayim Bialik. Eric was doing a fair amount of Jewish learning with Orthodox Jewish rabbis and had started a weekly […]

In a world of increasing anti-Semitism, I recently met an unexpected advocate for Orthodox Jews. Michel King is a fifty-year old Irish Catholic woman with a passion for praising and defending the Orthodox Jewish community. That’s because some of her first friends in life (growing up in Borough Park, Brooklyn) were her Orthodox Jewish neighbors. […]

When I was first making the transition from Conservative to Orthodox, an observant Conservative family I knew invited me over for Shabbos essentially to have an “intervention.” “Look,” they told me, “you can be kosher and shomer Shabbos without becoming one of THEM. If you become Orthodox – you’ll become a rock-thrower.” Where did an intelligent, […]

“So there is this wonderful speaker that is coming to our community, I think you should come tonight and hear her. She talks about what its like to be an Orthodox Jew in the City.” Ugh, why would I want to go and hear a speaker like that, I say to myself.  To be fair […]

Last Saturday night, after three days of being off-line due to Rosh Hashana and Shabbos, I powered up my iPhone, and the emails started flooding in. Apparently during the holiday a story broke about a pre-Rosh Hashana El Al flight to Israel (LY4) which took off from JFK and was full of Hasidic men who refused to […]