A controversy erupts over whether an Orthodox woman, who covers her hair with a wig for religious reasons, should be required to remove her wig for an arrest photograph. (LoHud)
Israel’s Chaplaincy Corps Rabbi Avichai Ronsky ruled that Halacha prohibited forensic DNA tests on IDF soldiers’ bone parts handed over by Hezbollah, a decision binding for […]

A couple of months ago I mentioned — with great fondness — Rav Yehuda Amital, the founder of Yeshivat Har Etzion, in a blog post.
Well, over the weekend I started reading the first English-language book of Rav Amital’s writings.
Commitment and Complexity is a translation of a Hebrew book compiled in honor of Rav Amital’s […]

Ari Alexander is guest blogging (via Blackberry) from the World Conference on Dialogue in Madrid, organized by the Muslim World League under the patronage of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.
I am sitting at the closing ceremony now. On my left is the past speaker of the parliament of indonesia, the largest muslim country in the […]

Ari Alexander is guest blogging (via Blackberry) from the World Conference on Dialogue in Madrid, organized by the Muslim World League under the patronage of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.
Here’s an example of the kind of thing I learned here that I wouldn’t have otherwise known.
King Abdullah, as custodian of the two holiest places in […]

Ari Alexander is guest blogging (via Blackberry) from the World Conference on Dialogue in Madrid, organized by the Muslim World League under the patronage of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.
After spending the first 24 hours as a participant observer, I decided it was time to jump in. For me that meant being part of […]

Ari Alexander is guest blogging (via Blackberry) from the World Conference on Dialogue in Madrid, organized by the Muslim World League under the patronage of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.
I was interviewed today by the Pakistani television channel, AAJ, as well as by a prominent pastor of a mega-church in the DC area.
But in a […]

Ari Alexander is guest blogging (via Blackberry) from the World Conference on Dialogue in Madrid, organized by the Muslim World League under the patronage of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.
I had lunch today with Nihad Awad and Ibrahim Cooper, the top two people from the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), and Dalia Mogahed and […]

Ari Alexander is guest blogging (via Blackberry) from the World Conference on Dialogue in Madrid, organized by the Muslim World League under the patronage of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.
We teach the teenagers in our programs to be curious, to ask questions, to discover and to ultimately respect based on understanding.
I was on the bus […]

Over at his blog, Rabbi Andy Bachman has posted a beautiful tribute to his teacher, the late Rabbi A. Stanley Dreyfus, who passed away this week.
It’s a moving rumination on a very personal relationship, but in its respect for the rebbe-talmid (master-student) relationship — a relationship forged with the help of Judaism’s great texts and […]

Anyone who has spent time on MyJewishLearning.com knows that we have a lot of articles by the late Rabbi Louis Jacobs.
And in 2006, when Rabbi Jacobs died, Matt Plen wrote an article for us about this great figure of British Jewry.
Rabbi Jacobs, who was originally the leader of an Orthodox congregation, is perhaps best […]