Jews barred from Temple Mount

Published on May 16, 2013

Israel Police barred Israeli Jews and tourists from the Temple Mount following threats of Muslim violence.

Pico-Robertson as a Demographically Stagnant Community

By Pini Herman
Published on March 29, 2013

Maharat: A new model of leadership by Rabbi Hyim Shafner

By Rabbi Hyim Shafner
Published on March 1, 2013

Orthodox Sandy relief

Published on November 20, 2012

When Hurricane Sandy made landfall in late October, it left much of New York City and its surrounding communities in shambles, sending shockwaves all the way to Los Angeles. Touched by the stories of devastation, three local rabbis and their congregations pulled together to raise nearly $75,000 in one week to help residents in the Five Towns on Long Island and Far Rockaway, Queens, both areas with vibrant Jewish communities.

Orthodox Jewish Brooklyn store owner latest serial murder victim

Published on November 19, 2012

Three Brooklyn store owners, two of them Orthodox Jews, have been murdered at work by the same gunman, according to New York police.

Study: Orthodox Jewish males transmitted mumps in school

Published on November 1, 2012

A mumps outbreak in New York and New Jersey in which 97 percent of the more than 3,500 cases were Orthodox Jews was a result of the way Orthodox boys are schooled, according to a new study.

Anat Hoffman’s arrest at Western Wall galvanizing liberal Jewish groups

Published on October 22, 2012

Last week’s episode was hardly the first time Israeli police stopped activist Anat Hoffman while she was leading a women’s prayer service at the Western Wall in violation of Israeli law.

But what is our GOAL?

By Rav Yosef Kanefsky
Published on August 23, 2012

The Rosner-Cohen Exchange Part V: Are you biased against intermarried Jews?

By Shmuel Rosner
Published on July 30, 2012

Helping mothers have it all

By Susan Freudenheim
Published on June 27, 2012

The much-discussed article in the July/August Atlantic magazine begins with a story that likely will be familiar to any working mother. The author, Anne-Marie Slaughter, is at an evening work event talking to very important, very professional people, and all that’s really on her mind is the plight of her teenage son, who’s floundering at home without her.

New York Jews: The surge of the Orthodox

By Shmuel Rosner
Published on June 12, 2012

Jewish Girl is Too Hot for Orthodox Boss

By Ilana Angel
Published on May 24, 2012

Sex Education in Orthodox High Schools

By Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz
Published on March 13, 2012

Sex Education in Orthodox High Schools

Published on March 13, 2012

The Challenge of Offering Moral Rebuke in the Workplace

Published on March 7, 2012

Not of One Cloth

By Rav Yosef Kanefsky
Published on February 22, 2012

Desexualizing Public Space

By Rabbi Zev Farber
Published on February 7, 2012

Controversy grows in Israel over extension of Tal Law granting haredim army exemptions

Published on January 31, 2012

When Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, granted a few hundred haredi Orthodox Jews an exemption from army service, it’s likely he never dreamed that 63 years later, tens of thousands of haredi Israelis would claim the exemption -- or that the issue would be among the most contentious in modern Israel.

N.J. bus drivers working on Thanksgiving driving Jewish students

Published on November 23, 2011

Some school bus drivers in Lakewood, N.J., are expressing their displeasure with having to work on Thanksgiving driving Orthodox Jewish students to school.

NY may close bus service that makes women sit in back

Published on October 21, 2011

New York City authorities said they will shut down a city bus service run by Orthodox Jews if the group doesn't stop making women sit at the back of the bus.

Israeli forces state to change “Jewish” classification

Published on October 7, 2011

Yoram Kaniuk, a rambunctious 81-year-old author, was hailed by Israeli secularists this week for winning a court victory that compelled the state to stop listing Judaism as his "religion" while keeping "Jewish" as his "ethnicity." He is the first Israeli Jew to have done so.

America’s Pogrom

Published on August 12, 2011

It was tense conversation. The editor at NPR (clearly Jewish) was defending the reporting about violence in Brooklyn. Twenty years ago black mobs had taken to the streets after a car accident that took the life of a black child. Jews huddled in their homes in fear. Cars were torched, Jews beaten, Norman Rosenbaum, a Jewish student from Australia lay dead, killed by the mob. Police were held back by an incompetent mayor. The media whose job was to report the facts were creating a fantasy, claiming, “there are conflicts between blacks and Jews. Tensions are high as ethnic groups clash.” I told the editor she had the story wrong. There were no attacks by Jews, it was a one way battle. Finally in exasperation I yelled at her, “Jews are dying and you are lying.”

The Daily Show’s Wyatt Cenac on the Eruv - The Thin Jew Line

Published on March 24, 2011

Canberra opens ritual bath

Published on January 14, 2011

For the first time, Orthodox Jews in Australia’s capital city have a ritual bath. Mikvah Chaya Mushka Canberra opened its doors in Canberra this week for the small Jewish community of about 600 people. There is no Jewish school or kosher butcher, and Orthodox and Progressive Jews share a community center for prayer services, but local Jews believe a mikvah will attract more Jews to the capital.

Quebec Orthodox Jews fight bill banning Muslim veils

Published on October 21, 2010

Quebec's Orthodox Jewish community is fighting a bill that would ban women from wearing a Muslim face veil when receiving government services.

Rabbi breaks with Carl Paladino over apology

Published on October 14, 2010

NYTIMES.com: The alliance between the Republican Carl P. Paladino and an Orthodox rabbi from Brooklyn has fallen apart, with the rabbi denouncing Mr. Paladino on Wednesday for his apology over remarks he had made about homosexuality on Sunday.

On marrying out

By Amy Klein
Published on January 17, 2008

When I was 25, my Orthodox girlfriends and I discussed at what age, if we weren't married, we might sleep with someone. The question was deeper than its "Sex and the City" nature might sound (although those girls had made that decision a long time ago).

Law and disorder

By David Suissa
Published on January 3, 2008

Only in Los Angeles can you have a convention of Orthodox Jews where the keynote address is given by a woman named Bacon, the special guest speaker is a famous Hollywood film critic and the executive director begins his Shabbat sermon by talking about Christmas.

Politics of liberal and conservative Jews reverse

By Arnold Steinberg
Published on November 15, 2007

Recently, I spoke to Reform rabbinical students in their class on "Jewish Political Tradition." Which is, exactly, what? My expertise, I told them, is politics, not theology. Here was my dilemma: to talk reality or defer to the orthodoxy of Reform Jews, which is to say, political liberalism. (Forget the Reconstructionists, i.e., Jewish Unitarians, who are oxymoronic "religious" secular humanists.) How confusing all this, especially for non-Jews, who are further told that Conservative Jews are somewhere between Reform Jews and Orthodox Jews -- sort of like the words "liberal" and "conservative."

Briefs: Muggings mar Shabbat shalom in Pico-Robertson, ‘L.A. Eight’ case dropped

Published on November 8, 2007

News briefs.

The Yavneh incident was stupid but not quite anti-Semitic

By Michael Berenbaum
Published on October 11, 2007

Last month, Kol Nidrei services on the evening of the Day of Atonement held at a local Hancock Park yeshiva were interrupted by the government officials pressing a zoning violation. It was an act of stupidity and insensitivity, not anti-Semitism.

The school with no name

By David Suissa
Published on December 7, 2006

You can hang out for years at the Pico-Robertson intersection and still have no clue that you are 50 feet away from a Jewish high school for boys called Natan Eli.

I’m dreaming of a Jewish Thanksgiving

By David Suissa
Published on November 22, 2006

Ever since I moved to this country 25 years ago, I've been in awe of how 250 million people stop everything during the fourth Thursday of November to gather around cranberry sauce, stuffing and bread pudding.This year, however, being in the Orthodox hood, where they celebrate a Jewish version of Thanksgiving twice a week -- on Friday night and Shabbat lunch, without turkey and TV but with lots of prayers, blessings and songs, and at least as much food -- I've been experiencing something a little different: a respectful but slightly blasé attitude toward this big American holiday.

Gaza Settler Pullout Protest Draws 500

By David Finnigan
Published on July 28, 2005

More than 500 demonstrators, mostly Orthodox Jews, gathered in front of the Israeli consulate in Los Angeles last weekend to oppose Israel's planned, upcoming pullout of settlers from Gaza.

The Answer Isn’t…

By Rob Eshman
Published on November 27, 2003

Aliyah is the oat bran of the Jewish people. We know it's good for us. We know we should be having more of it. But truth is, we just find it hard to swallow. And we certainly don't like it shoved down our throats.

His Name Was Chaim Potok

By Peter Ephross
Published on July 25, 2002

Chaim Potok was a novelist who paved the way for a younger generation of religious American Jewish writers -- and a Jewish scholar who worked tirelessly to bring Jews and Judaism closer together.

Your Letters

Published on July 19, 2001

Your Letters

Opening the Closet

By Naomi Pfefferman
Published on January 18, 2001

In Sandi Simcha DuBowski's searing new documentary, "Trembling Before G-d," about Orthodox gays and lesbians, David, a handsome L.A. doctor, describes struggling to change his sexuality.