One woman wrote to a rabbi in 2021: “It’s terribly frustrating that I feel powerful attraction to my husband specifically in the week of the 7 clean days, with the height of desire occurring on mikveh night, and the following day. After that,…
Category: Other
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Counting seven clean days: Female-halachic dissonance
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Why Dialogue Dies With Extremists
When Reason Meets Radicalization: Why Facts Alone Cannot Change a Hateful Mind This week I spoke with an Israeli man who teaches at an university in the Netherlands. What he told me stayed with me: “Trying to change someone’s mind with facts…
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Thanksgiving in Jerusalem and the future of Jewish identity
Gap-year programs in Israel are reshaping Jewish identity for American teens. This Thanksgiving, Jerusalem showed why that matters
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Born to Political Extremism? Left Out, Right On!
Here’s a brain-scratching question: why do so few Israelis “cross the lines” from Right to Left (or vice versa) when voting in elections? After the calamitous Oct. 7 debacle and mass protests against the government for its confused hostage…
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Peter Beinart: The Last Good Jew
Ernesto “Che” Guevara once wrote, in a moment of revolutionary bravado, “Better to die standing than to live on one’s knees.” Twenty-five centuries earlier, a different kind of revolutionary—Mordechai ha-Yehudi, the first Jew in…
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Mamdani and Jesse Helms — how people can change
At the end of this post, there is a link to a video in which (at 16:08 minutes) Alan Dershowitz relates the following story about Jesse Helms. Dershowitz was very upset when he saw that Jesse Helms (who had opposed civil rights and other goals…
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Beinart at Tel Aviv University
Since 2012, when Peter Beinart wrote The Crisis of Zionism, he has been one of the primary flashpoints for Jews and Israel. The book presciently warned of a growing schism within the Jewish people, one that was particularly but not only…
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Depth, Independence… And Humility: What Responsible Psak Really Requires
Rav Yoni Rosensweig recently wrote a thought-provoking post about a question he received: may one drink wine poured by a non-religious Jew? After analyzing the halachic sources, he told the caller that it was permissible. The caller then pushed…
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Encountering God (Vayetse, Covenant & Conversation)
Rebecca, hitherto infertile, became pregnant. Suffering acute pain, “she went to inquire of the Lord” [vatelech lidrosh et Hashem] (Bereishit 25:22). The explanation she received was that she was carrying twins who were contending in her…
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Finding Light in the Darkest Season
In Vermont, winter isn’t coming. It’s already here. This year, the early winter feels a little harder. It’s harder to get outside with a spunky kid who refuses to wear her coat. It’s harder to adjust to the time change, especially as the…
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