Recently I heard Sammy Samuels, one of 20 Jews in left Myanmar speak about his homeland and how he made a difference. In early May, a cyclone ravaged Myanmar killing hundreds of thousands of people.
Samuels was in New York at the time of the cyclone and couldn’t get in touch with any of his family […]

The Israel Electric Company is hoping to encourage consumers to install solar panels on rooftops by offering to buy excess electricity for 4 times what customers pay for electricity. (Arutz Sheva)
Israeli consumer and environmental organizations are suspicious of the flourishing phenomenon of “greenwash”, with places and companies claiming to be “green” when they are not. […]

Earlier this week, another Jewish blog wrote about this story, which reports on the growing absence of men in the Reform rabbinate. But I can’t link to that blog post, because the editors decided to include a picture a female rabbi, who as my mom might say, is a bisel zaftig (Yiddish for a little […]

Today’s New York Times reports the death of Vic Hershkowitz one of the great handball players of all time.
Competing from the early 1940s to the early 1960s, Mr. Hershkowitz captured 23 national amateur titles, including a record nine consecutive three-wall singles championships from 1950 to 1958. He swept the one-, three- and four-wall singles […]

Yesterday I posted Rabbi Avi Shafran’s response to Shmuly Yanklowitz’s response to Rabbi Shafran’s op-ed response to Yanklowitz’s organization’s response to the recent Agriprocessors scandal.
Below is Shmuly’s latest — and the last I’ll post. I encourage all those interested to continue the debate in the Comments section.
Dear Rabbi Shafran,
Thank you for your letter.
I am […]

I saw this Bar Mitzvah speech video a few weeks ago.
It’s one of the most profound things I’ve heard in a while:

HT: EV

On Monday, I wrote about Rabbi Avi Shafran’s op-ed in the Jerusalem Post, which expressed discomfort with those groups calling for a boycott of Agriprocessors. The company should be presumed innocent until proven guilty, Rabbi Shafran suggested.
I also solicited and posted a response from Shmuly Yanklowitz, a director of Uri L’Tzedek, one of the groups […]

Some wild and unfortunate events ended French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s visit to Israel today.
An Israeli official says a policeman committed suicide at an airport farewell for French President Nicolas Sarkozy, setting off panic at the ceremony.
The shooting at Israel’s Ben-Gurion airport sent Sarkozy’s wife, Carla Bruni, running up the stairs into their airplane. Security guards […]

Today’s New York Times reported more findings from a recent Pew study on religion in America, with attention to the nature of theological tolerance — at least among laypeople.
70 percent of Americans affiliated with a religion or denomination said they agreed that “many religions can lead to eternal life,” including majorities among Protestants and Catholics. […]

This week’s featured homepage article is written by MJL’s go-to movie critic Saul Austerlitz. But recently in the Forward, he looked at a different aspect of Jewish culture that most of us know next-to-nothing about: Frum Entertainment:
The look I received from the proprietor of Heichal Judaica, A bookstore in Brooklyn’s heavily Orthodox Midwood district, was […]