“…in Merkaz those learning are doing so for the sake of the nation, while in the haredi yeshivot those learning are doing so for themselves…”
A number of years ago I asked someone in Merkaz ha-Rav how his yeshiva...
“…it is problematic to assume that individuals, even if they share a willingness to stretch the boundaries of Orthodoxy, form part of a common accommodative camp…”
In sum, it is problematic to assume that individuals, even if they share a...
“Social media enable human relationships to be thicker, wiser, and more stable…”
When the community is mindfully organized, it will have even more substantive and creative...
“Israel was a collective statement on the part of an oppressed and persecuted people that they were tired of being afraid…”
For thousands of years to be a Jew meant being afraid. Afraid of anti-Semites,...
“Consider the illogical message many schools are sending their students about drinking and having sex: that intercourse with someone “under the influence” of alcohol is always rape…”
Consider the illogical message many schools are sending their students about drinking and having...
“…to be an American adult has always been to be a symbolic figure in someone else’s coming-of-age story”
…we can see that to be an American adult has always been to be...
“Older singles require a proportionally greater ‘hope’ for a better future with any given person”
Assuming that all relationships take effort and involve some “cost” of time, money, freedom,...
“Israel engagement…must enlarge our educators, our Hillel directors, and our student leaders”
Israel engagement, in responding to this micro-crisis and in the work more broadly, must...
“Positive thinking fools our minds into perceiving that we’ve already attained our goal…”
Positive thinking fools our minds into perceiving that we’ve already attained our goal, slackening...
“It’s hard to have that sort of conversation [about what the other person wants with sex] if there’s no intimacy”
In theory, when it comes to sex, it might make sense to talk about...