It is no secret that nations spy on each other. They always have. Just think of Moses and Joshua sending spies into Canaan. That’s what you should expect and be prepared for, both defensively and offensively if necessary. Whether it is through individual contacts, so-called diplomats, arms dealers, shady fifth men, electronic surveillance, or hacking. The benefit of internet technology…
General Topics
Black Lives Matter
Black Lives Matter indeed, and so they ought to, all the more for what they have had to endure. But the organization, however noble and justified its beginnings, is in serious danger of marginalizing and undermining itself. For the sake of its cause, I hope it does not fall further into a political trap. There can be no doubt that…
The Temple
The Temple has been the most significant building in Jewish history. The Fast of Av commemorates two occasions when it, Jerusalem, and the Jewish state were destroyed. Tradition has it that the 3rd Temple will last forever! But how essential is it? We managed before we had a Temple with a collapsible, moveable Tabernacle. Babylonian Jewry survived without one. And…
Modesty
In the world we live in, there seems little room for modesty. Where absolutely every nook and cranny of the human body is easily available on the Internet and teens see more pornography than people of my age saw in the whole of their lives, any attempt to cover up is regarded as prudery or religious extremism. In theory modesty…
Proud to be a Zio
I was once standing in line to board a plane at Stansted Airport, and I found myself next to a gentleman who appeared, to my trained eye, to be an Orthodox Jew—black suit, white shirt, no tie, black hat, and beard. I turned to him and said, lightheartedly, in a mixture of English and Yiddish, “With a ‘Shayna Yid’ like…
Conversion Confusion
We know well enough by now that the status of conversions to Judaism is an unholy, inconsistent, politicized and often corrupt mess. As a people and as a religion we are just as confused, inconsistent, and illogical as any other. I am referring to the chaos that reigns within what is confusingly and illogically called Orthodoxy. According to the Jewish…