Articles

January, 2016

To our members and friends, I hope you are well. It has been gratifying reaching so many people through classes and online offerings through our Institute. We thank all who are supporters and members and who have been participating in the wide variety of learning opportunities as we spread our vision across the country and beyond.

Here are some upcoming highlights for January-February:

Shabbat January 15-16: I will be the scholar-in-residence at the Kemp Mill Synagogue, Silver Spring, Maryland (11910 Kemp Mill Rd). Free and open to the public.

I will begin by presenting a fictitious case, closer perhaps to current halakhic
reality in certain circles than many would like to believe:

Many Jews in our day, like many of our brethren of other tribes, are seeking
to mend the fractures that divide us from ourselves and from others, and to
find ways to heal the wounds that afflict us only six decades after the
Holocaust and the rebirth of Israel. Amid these efforts, an idealistic,
scholarly nineteenth-century rabbi from Livorno seems,
to some, to provide a beacon of hope and humanity.

The current conversion crisis that is searing the larger Jewish community in general and the Orthodox community in particular is grounded in politically and ideologically driven doublespeak. Orthodox Judaism teaches that the Jew is sanctified by obeying God's commandments. Honest people may disagree over details. When agendas replace conscience and the halakha is superseded by policy, we are not being honest to God or to each other.