Mordechai Lightstone
By Mordechai Lightstone
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Opinion Why #BringBackOurBoys Is the Perfect Hashtag
A picture tweeted from Matisyahu’s Twitter feed In writing about the decision to adapt #BringBackOurBoys as the virtual call to action for the three kidnapped Israeli students — Eyal Yifrach, Gilad Shaer and Naftali Frankel — Sigal Samuel expresses her regret that the hashtag appropriates the call to action for the 200 Nigerian school girls…
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Opinion Why Bother Converting to ‘Cat GIF’ Judaism?
Grumpy Cat In her recent editorial, Jane Eisner confronts what she views as the problems with Judaism’s current conversion process — and conversion’s potential usefulness in “sustaining the future” of the Jewish people. When we speak of the modern conversion process, it’s important to separate social practices from religious mandate. Many of the issues that…
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Opinion A Digital Haggadah? Now That’s Just Wrong.
The “Ultimate Digital Haggadah” as viewed on an iPad. On my shelf I must have a dozen Haggadahs, some annotated, others illustrated and one even illuminated. I have thick hardcover tomes and soft Maxwell House prints — each one serves a different purpose. But the Haggadah that I use each year, the one that I…
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Opinion A Woman Is More Than a Wedding Night
Racheli Ibenboim chats with writer Tuvia Tenenbom./Photo by Isi Tenenbaum I may not be a dyed-in-the-wool feminist by any stretch of the imagination. But I have a strong sense of the rights of women to take agency in their own lives and a repulsion for the oppressive nature of men who harass women for their…
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Opinion Menachem Stark — Just Another Hasid?
I was pained to read Jay Michaelson’s article about murdered Hasidic businessman Menachem Stark. With its ‘Us-vs.-Them’ mentality, simplistic black-and-white view of human character, and broad stereotypes, it was an ugly and shameful slur. It was almost down-right Haredi. I don’t claim to possess any more information about Stark than Michaelson does. Just like him…
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Opinion Bob Dylan, M.C. Hammer and the Joy of a Mitzvah
As we wove through the backroads of an 18th-century Italian estate in our rented Volvo, I questioned myself once more: What exactly was I doing there? It was the summer of 2004, my first time in Europe. And in truth, the Baroque home commissioned by one of the Doges of Venice and the site of…
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Fast Forward Why top Democrats oppose bipartisan bill targeting antisemitism in universities
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Opinion I’m a Zionist at Columbia. The protesters at Hamilton Hall were a threat to Jewish students like me
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News ‘Everyone gets to be uncomfortable’: How Jewish students at Brown kept antisemitism at bay
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Culture In shooting her dog, Kristi Noem defied morality — and the Talmud
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Looking Forward Fact, fiction, and the campus protester who got arrested on his birthday