Impeachment is an ancient relic, a rusty legal instrument and political weapon first wielded by the English Parliament, in 1376, to wrest power from the King by charging his ministers with abuses of power, convicting[…]
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Author: Drew Kaplan
Considering the paradoxes of Sukkot
I love the paradoxes of Sukkot: a holiday with profound universalistic theological overtones that became politically important for particularists; a holiday that uses the metaphor of the sukkah both to imagine the canopy under which[…]
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“…as creators of Halakhah, we must work to make sure that every halakhically committed voice is genuinely heard”
…communities need joy to survive, and Modern Orthodoxy cannot be built on constant moral self-denial. It is true that as subjects of Halakhah, our foremost duty is to find ways to obey even when our[…]
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“The decision of which siddur a congregation should use is both a significant choice for any congregation, and a choice whose importance should not be exaggerated”
The decision of which siddur a congregation should use is both a significant choice for any congregation, and a choice whose importance should not be exaggerated. Purchasing a new siddur is a significant expense for[…]
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“the Artscroll Siddur is the product of a worldview which does not reflect the values of the Modern Orthodox community and therefore cannot truly meet the needs of our community”
…the Artscroll Siddur is the product of a worldview which does not reflect the values of the Modern Orthodox community and therefore cannot truly meet the needs of our community. There is no indication that[…]
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“The reality of this primary process is that if you aren’t on the stage in Houston next week, you aren’t going to be the Democratic nominee”
…the 10 men and women not on the stage will argue that the Democratic National Committee’s rules on how to qualify for the Houston debate (2% in four early state or national polls and 130,000[…]
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“Twitter, in its imposed brevity, seems to affirm the aphorism’s original meaning: be intelligently succinct”
What of Twitter? “Brevity is the soul of wit,” Shakespeare’s Polonius says, issuing the greatest unintentional aphorism in literature: at the time, scholars say, the line meant merely that concision is the essence of useful[…]
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Challenges of reconstructing Rashi’s Torah commentary: “there never was an Urtext of Rashi’s Torah commentary”
…synopsis of the current state of knowledge regarding medieval Jewish scribal practice, manuscript production, and fluid redaction that led to multilinear production shows that texts continued to evolve long after their initial publication. Authors never[…]
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“Invoking the word does not demean the memory of the Holocaust. Instead, the lessons of the Holocaust will be lost if we refuse to engage with them.”
…it’s important to note that despite the contemporary association of concentration camps with the Shoah, they are not a Nazi invention. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, various imperial forces — including the[…]
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“Yom Yerushalayim often gets the short end of the stick, often overlooked even by those who profess to celebrate it”
Yom Yerushalayim often gets the short end of the stick, often overlooked even by those who profess to celebrate it. This can be understood in light of the complex nature of the day. For many[…]
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