So here is this innocent youngster on a flight in the USA trying to put on his tefilin, modestly and as inconspicuously as possible, in his seat. The air hostess has never seen these funny black boxes and straps before. They look like a device. Could be he is a suicide bomber strapping himself into a bomb. Panic. The kid…
Author: Jeremy Rosen
Rabbi Jesus
Recently, Shlomo Riskin, an American Israeli Orthodox rabbi, came in for sustained attack because he was shown on a Christian Embassy video referring to “Rabbi Jesus”. Such was the brouhaha that Rabbi Riskin had to defend himself, claiming not to have praised Jesus. He said, “I never praised the character or the personality of the person in whose name Jews…
Spit and Pray
Ever since I first encountered the very insular Jews who live in parts of Jerusalem in 1957, I have been aware that some of them have the habits of throwing stones at people they do not approve of and of spitting. I don’t mean spitting to clear the throat. Lots of people do that. It is common in the Middle…
Kill the Messenger
Two weeks ago I wrote an article about corruption in the Jewish religious world. As I expected, the response from my target audience was to ignore it altogether, or that I must be a charlatan and a hypocrite, an enemy of Orthodoxy. Why didn’t I focus on all the good things religious people do, and why not emphasize all the…
Let Them Be
I know this is going to sound harsh and unfeeling but we ought to leave failed states alone to stew in their own self-imposed cruelties. It is, in the end, up to their own citizens to either put up or shut up. I really thought Obama was going to usher in a new era and stop trying to cure those…
Religion Is Sick
Yet another case has been revealed of Orthodox corruption. A rabbi, very strict on conversions but lax on morality, was taped offering “Orthodox” conversion for sex. This comes after a yearlong litany including the trial of Charedi youngsters sent by other Charedi bosses out to Japan as drug “mules”, another Charedi “rabbi” accused of dealing in sex and drugs, the…