Dov Linzer
By Dov Linzer
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Community What is the proper blessing for the COVID vaccine?
Many people around the world are experiencing powerful feelings of gratitude, relief, and joy upon hearing about the approval of a COVID-19 vaccine or upon receiving the vaccine personally. For religious people, these feelings might translate into a sense of God’s hand in our lives at this moment, likely a sense of gratitude towards God…
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Opinion What does the Torah say about refusing to concede? A lot.
As of this writing, President Donald Trump has yet to concede the Presidential election, despite having decisively lost the Electoral College as well as the popular vote. Instead of conceding, the president has filed numerous lawsuits in battleground states while vociferously alleging widespread voter fraud on Twitter, claims that, with a tiny number of exceptions,…
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Community For those who cannot fast, Yom Kippur should still be meaningful
Yom Kippur is almost upon us. According to Torah law, the Jewish people are mandated to fast the entire day. This can be difficult enough for most people, but particularly so for those with eating disorders. Fasting itself is not just the issue. For them, Yom Kippur can be a triggering holiday that creates and…
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Opinion It’s time for a revolution in halakhic rulings.
The realities of quarantine and sheltering-in-place during these last few months have created challenges for the halakhically-observant community. Halakhic decisors have issued their rulings, responding appropriately and sympathetically to these unprecedented realities. What has largely been absent, however, is a serious engagement with the person asking the question; sympathetic psak is not the same as…
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Opinion To my fellow Orthodox Jews: Don’t open shuls until you can open them to women
After two months of heavy restrictions on New Yorkers’ comings and goings, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that religious gatherings of up to ten people will now be permitted. My ears, like those of many religious Jews, perked up at the number ten. In Judaism, ten is the minimum number of people required to…
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Opinion We Need a Mikveh Revolution
Recent events have forced us as a community to take a hard look at the practice of having female converts immerse themselves in a mikveh before a rabbinical court of three men. In the wake of news that a Washington rabbi, Barry Freundel, allegedly spied on women as they were engaging in this ritual, others…
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