Rabbi Avi Shafran
By Rabbi Avi Shafran
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Opinion No, The Orthodox Don’t Hate Muslims
Last year, a Hassidic rabbi and son of Holocaust survivors did something noble. He dedicated his presidential election vote to the American Muslim soldier Captain Humayun Khan — who was killed in combat and about whom his father Khizr spoke movingly at the Democratic National Convention. I’m an Orthodox Jewish Immigrant My vote is private….
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Opinion The OU Is Right: Orthodox Women Shouldn’t Be Rabbis
Most of a rabbi’s roles can be halachically and effectively assumed by women, and have been for many years. A rabbi must be learned in Jewish texts and the practical laws pertaining to daily Jewish life — and Orthodox women’s seminaries teach thousands of young Jewish women those laws, and do a top-notch job of…
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Opinion It’s Time To Dispense With The Vanity Spending In Orthodox Communities
This time of year you might spy me in the supermarket smiling in the direction of the guy stocking the produce bins. If you do, know that I’m imagining what he would think if he knew that a fruit not terribly unlike the 50-cent lemons he’s handling recently commanded up to a couple hundred dollars…
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Opinion Religious Pluralism Would Spell Disaster For Israel
Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, recently penned an open letter to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu in Haaretz. The letter was entitled “Netanyahu Refuses to Talk to Us. But We American Jews Won’t Be Silenced”, and it was prompted by Netanyahu telling reporters that the non-Orthodox movements are using the Western…
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Opinion Why We Are Joining President Trump’s Rosh Hashanah Call
It’s hardly a secret that there isn’t exactly a broad consensus within the Jewish community about President Trump (or for that matter, sadly, much else). Criticism of Mr. Trump for his string of public remarks last month about the violence in Charlottesville came from both liberal and some conservative media, even from some lawmakers in…
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Life Open Orthodoxy’s Name Game Doesn’t Make It Any More Orthodox
I never did like the name “Open Orthodoxy”. It doesn’t take a Talmudic genius to see its not-so-subtle insinuation, that the rest of the Orthodox world is somehow…“closed.” Closed, though, to what? To beliefs at variance with those of the Judaism of the ages? Well, yes, that’s the definition of Orthodoxy. Closed to innovations rejected…
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Opinion Jews Should Use Charlottesville To Overcome Bigotry — And Black People Can, Too
There is comfort to be taken in some of what emerged from the ugliness of Charlottesville. Despite the horrific events, there is surely solace to be had in the widespread revulsion, for example, that was evoked in so very many Americans, Democrats and Republicans alike, by the marching and chanting white supremacists. And the utter…
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Opinion Kotel Controversy Shows That U.S. Jewish Groups Don’t Represent The Orthodox
What are we, chopped liver? The question, from my Orthodox corner of the American Jewish world, is born of the recent onslaught of outrage aimed at the Israeli government by representatives of “American Jewry.” The outrage itself, of course, was born of two things. The first was the Israeli Cabinet’s freezing of a resolution aimed…
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