Rabbi Avi Shafran
By Rabbi Avi Shafran
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Opinion No, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Did Not Sin Against The Memory Of The Holocaust
Regular comparisons of today’s persecutions to the Holocaust rightly rankle those of us who lost family as a result of the Nazi attempt to annihilate European Jewry. Whether it’s Louis Farrakhan’s assertion that blacks have suffered a “holocaust 100 times worse” than what the Jews faced during World War II, or PETA’s impressively tone-deaf “Holocaust…
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Opinion Why These Orthodox Jews Are Fighting For Muslim Rights
An intriguing alliance, ad hoc but no less notable for the fact, took place in Israel’s Knesset recently. Two Haredi parties, United Torah Judaism and Shas, came to the defense of the Joint List of Arab parties to block a bill that would ban religious institutions from using loudspeakers. The legislation was clearly aimed at…
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Opinion Kavanaugh Will Stand For Religious Freedom — And That’s Good For The Jews
When Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement from the Supreme Court, many immediately predicted the worst. NPR’s Nina Totenberg, channeling R.E.M., proclaimed it “the end of the world as we know it.” After President Trump nominated Judge Brett Kavanaugh to replace Justice Kennedy, Ms. Totenberg admitted that the nominee was “incredibly charming” “enormously skilled” and…
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Opinion The Supreme Court Was Right To Protect Religious Freedom
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Monday that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission demonstrated hostility to religion in the case of the Colorado baker who declined to bake a special cake for a wedding of two men. It did not, however, address the issue most important to both sides in the case. That would be…
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Opinion Actually, Jews Do Control The Weather
Last week, a D.C. Councilman named Trayon White took to Facebook to claim that the Rothschilds control the climate. That European business dynasty has for many years been the stand-in for Jews in the minds of anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists who see the Jewish family empire, and by extension Jews in general, as pulling the strings…
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Opinion No, Israel Is Not Descending Into Theocracy
Few people have invested as much effort, time, money and heart on behalf of the Jewish people and Israel than the current head of the World Jewish Congress, Ronald S. Lauder. His political, educational and philanthropic activism over decades is legend, and rightly so. Which made my heart sink even deeper this Monday than it…
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Opinion You Know Who Isn’t Abandoning Israel? The Orthodox.
Some recent studies have yielded a disturbing picture: young American Jews are becoming more and more alienated from their elders’ full-hearted embrace of Israel. It has led to some hand-wringing. “When young Jews stop identifying with Israel or caring about it, this reinforces a lack of engagement with their Jewish identity overall,” wrote Batya Ungar-Sargon…
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Opinion The Tragedy Of The Liberal Jewish Response To Rubashkin’s Release
The celebrations in Orthodox Jewish communities of President Trump’s commutation of Sholom Mordechai Rubashkin’s prison sentence and the release, after eight years, of the former CEO of the Agriprocessors meatpacking plant in Iowa have subsided. But not before they engendered a rank venting of resentment in other Jewish circles over Mr. Rubashkin’s new freedom. Mr….
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