Huntington Hartford died on May 19, aged 97. He was a multimillionaire trust fund baby who inherited from a wealthy grandfather food magnate. He lived the life of a playboy. He married lots of times and spent much of his life in a haze of alcohol and drugs. At one time he dabbled in the art market and built up…
General Topics
Not Kosher Kosher
A few years ago PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) released a video of awful schechita practices at the biggest kosher abattoir in the USA. The practices shown on the video were roundly condemned by some religious authorities. Sadly, as you might expect, others prevaricated, arguing about only breaking the spirit of the law, as opposed to the…
What Orthodoxy?
Modern, Centrist, Enlightened Orthodoxy (no one knows quite what to call it) is dead. The alarm bells are ringing all around the Jewish world as a result of the recent decision of the rabbinical courts in Israel to question thousands of conversions, both in Israel and the Diaspora, performed by rabbis considered too modern/unreliable/suspect/not kosher enough/not subservient enough, even if…
Israel at 60
Everyone else is giving an opinion on Israel’s sixtieth. Even notional Jews who have had absolutely no positive involvement in Jewish life whatsoever have suddenly come out to relieve themselves of their own antipathies by excoriating Israel. Hope it makes them feel better. Here’s my contribution. If having a state was, as some Zionists ideologues dreamed, going to normalize Jews,…
Support the Ahmadiyya
It is a sad sign of the times that in all religions, fundamentalist pressure is exercising an intolerant influence that is spreading rather than receding. Some may argue that the times require it, that the perniciousness of libertarianism is the modern paganism and only strictness and protected environments can counteract the destructiveness of Western societies, but the negative impact this…
Cry for Zimbabwe
Pesach, when we think about freedom, has coincided this year with further atrocities from a latter day tyrant, the nasty, evil little man, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. In 1966 I was a student in Mir Yeshiva in Jerusalem when I was dispatched on a mission to Bulawayo, in what was then Southern Rhodesia, to stand in as a temporary rabbi…