The staff of Kol Hamevaser would like to wish a hearty mazal tov to interviewer extraordinaire Ari Lamm and Shlomit Schwalb on their recent engagement.
Aug 202007
Aug 132007
Rabbi Shalom Carmy
“Truth and Consequences” was not intended as a major treatment of intermarriage or anti-Semitism or halakhot pertaining to Gentiles. I wrote to a teacher who wanted to be prepared if his students brought up the Noah Feldman article.
I did not comment on the alleged Stalinism of the school in altering the photograph, in part because the opening paragraph of the New York Times article labored strenuously to avoid stating outright that the photograph was altered. The article successfully created that impression while protecting the distinguished author from the professional consequences of being caught out in a barefaced lie. The verbal subterfuge to which he resorted testified like a hundred witnesses that something was not kosher about his story. (And then we wonder why anti-Semites regard shyster lawyers as prototypically Jewish.)
Aug 052007
The staff of Kol Hamevaser would like to wish a hearty mazal tov to staff writer Ayol Samuels and Shoshana Fruchter on their recent marriage. We hope that their life together will be one of happiness and fulfillment.
Aug 012007
Gilah Kletenik is the Beren campus editor of Kol Hamevaser.
I sat there masticating each piece of lettuce with an unnecessary, if anxious amount of concentration, as two congressmen from New York between their forkfuls of pork and shrimp, questioned me about the intricacies of my faith. They wondered why men were prohibited from touching menstruating women and asked about military exemptions for the ultra-Orthodox in Israel.
I was a bit taken aback by their queries and not quite sure how to respond. It’s not as if the details of these halachot had suddenly escaped me; I am quite familiar with the minutia of both of these issues. Rather, I was engaged in a tumultuous inner-conflict: should I be as blunt as possible in answering their questions, spare no details, and risk making myself and all my brethren seem ever more peculiar? Or should I play that classic game of obfuscation and apologetics these practiced politicians know all too well?
