Steven I. Weiss
By Steven I. Weiss
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The Schmooze Theology of ‘True Detective’
You don’t have to go far to find people utterly disappointed in the season finale of “True Detective.” Many websites have spilled thousands of words expressing upset that the episode didn’t expose any remaining mysteries about the criminal acts driving its plot. But those upset at the finale weren’t paying attention. This show didn’t follow…
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News Doctors Say Circumcision Ritual Still Not Safe
A long-simmering dispute over a controversial circumcision procedure with allegedly life-threatening risks will land like a hot potato on the desk of incoming New York state Governor Eliot Spitzer this January, after the administration of outgoing Republican Governor George Pataki reached an agreement with Hasidic leaders on precautions that medical experts say will do little…
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News All Aboard: Studytime
Any compendium of Yiddish jokes is chock-full of items about Jews on a train. They talk, they eat, they sleep — all in the buildup toward some punch line about how Jews traveled in the old country. It was the “Jews on a train” phenomenon that Romanian-born Rabbi Moshe Shapiro was hoping to address when…
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News Israeli Rightist Calls for Transfer of Arabs
CORRECTION: The print version of this story gave an incorrect figure regarding the Kach Party. Rabbi Meir Kahane was its only member to be elected to the Knesset. Effi Eitam, a leader of the joint Knesset faction aligned with Orthodox Zionists worldwide, drew swift condemnation this week from secular American Jewish organizations because of his…
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News Orthodox Rabbis Eye Liberal Seminary
The main union of Modern Orthodox rabbis in America is preparing to vote on whether to admit graduates from an upstart Manhattan seminary. Most of the 1,000 members of the Rabbinical Council of America are graduates of Modern Orthodoxy’s flagship institution, Yeshiva University. But the RCA’s executive committee is scheduled to vote in June on…
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News Hasidic Rapper Strives To Stay Atop the Charts
This may be hard for some people to believe, but there was a time when MTV did not feature a Lubavitch Hasid in regular rotation. In just three short years, Matisyahu, also known as the Hasidic reggae superstar, has become a veritable phenomenon of Jewish and American pop culture. In his wake he has left…
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Culture Orthodox Rethinking Campus Outreach
Following on the heels of Chabad-Lubavitch’s successful campus programs, other Orthodox groups are now reaching out in new ways to college students of every Jewish denomination. Non-Hasidic, ultra-Orthodox Jews — or mitnagdim — have adopted an approach that is startlingly similar to the one presented by Chabad, the Hasidic sect whose outreach efforts have made…
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Culture Orthodox Rethinking Campus Outreach
Following on the heels of Chabad-Lubavitch’s successful campus programs, other Orthodox groups are now reaching out in new ways to college students of every Jewish denomination. Non-Hasidic, ultra-Orthodox Jews — or mitnagdim — have adopted an approach that is startlingly similar to the one presented by Chabad, the Hasidic sect whose outreach efforts have made…
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Looking Forward That time my violin teacher tried to convert me to Christianity
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Fast Forward UK’s largest Jewish group calls Israeli aid to Gaza ‘long overdue,’ months after disciplining members for criticizing Israel
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