Author Archive

Al Pacino, noted actor from the Godfather trilogy, showed up this week at a Borough Park synagogue to observe the prayers, and was later invited to the home of a local for some coffee and cheesecake.…

Another incident of Charedim in Mea Shearim getting angry about something or other and turning the streets into a war zone. This time it’s over the arrest of a Charedi organizer of violent protests in the…

The rabbinical head of a Jerusalem Yeshiva was so incensed at hearing of a student engaged in criminal behavior, that he took out a gun and shot the student twice. So claims an indictment issued against…

Sholom Rubashkin gave a tearful apology in court at his sentencing hearing this week over the criminal charges on which he’s been convicted. Prosecutors in the case have asked for a 25-year prison sentence, which, defense…

Our esteem for the inestimable Baruch Herzfeld, Williamsburg bike lane advocate and Hasid-Hipster peacemaker, shot up when we read of his penchant for merengue dancing, complete with an article in Tablet magazine showing him with a…

A section of the Jerusalem Talmud’s Tractate Bikkurim is now intelligible. No, really, it is. It was once missing a sentence, but the sentence has now been found in a tin can in the Geneva University, part of the…

Some people dislike women who put on tefillin and pray with their own minyan. They dislike them so much that they believe they should be pelted with chairs. The incident occurred at the Western Wall in…

First she was the Mahara”t, a “manhigah hilkhatit, rukhanit, toranit.” Then she was upgraded to a “rabbah.” But now Sara Hurwitz’s title might be in question. Hailed as the first woman to be ordained as anything close to an…

Movies and TV were easy for the rabbis to ban. Cell phones and Internet access, not so much. According to a new Israeli study, the large scale campaign to ban cell phones with Internet access has failed for the…

Gefilte fish is in jeopardy, and this is not some plot out of The Moshiach Times. Israel is blocking a large shipment of carp, the prime ingredient in gefilte fish, through a new 120% tarrif. U.S. representatives Anthony Weiner…