You expect to see naked (or near naked) women on the cover of Playboy. On the cover of ESPN magazine? Not so much. When our family’s copy of Outside magazine arrived recently, the cover made me look twice, and not in a good way. The cover photo of female climber Alex Puccio shows off her…
One of the great sporting events in Orthodox synagogues is correcting the layners — i.e., the Torah readers. The cantillations on the Torah are an intricate, lovely cultural heritage, one of our most treasured. But they are also difficult to master, require practice and are performed in front of an unmarked scroll — that is,…
For generations, scholars and cheder students have lugged around the Tanakh, the bedrock tome of Judaism, otherwise known as the Hebrew Bible. For some years now, they’ve also had access via their laptops to online versions. On September 8, the Torah, Nevi’im and Ketuvim – the three subsections of the Tanakh – will join the…
In attempt to counter those who accuse them of being extremists, Women of the Wall — composed of women who gather once a month for a prayer service at the Western Wall — recently asked women around the world to send in photographs of themselves reading from or holding a Torah. The campaign’s goal: Get…
There is intrigue across Israel’s Haredi community, after the sector’s media has reported on what seems to be a case of serial sefer Torah theft. Several communities in and around the central-Israel city of Lod have had scrolls stolen in recent weeks. The criminals were seemingly not opportunists, but rather individuals or gangs who had…
Dear Rabbi: Thanks for the double-bar-mitzvah Saturdays, the two-shift High Holy Day services, the grief counseling, Hebrew school teaching, Torah study leading, hospital visiting, song leading and sermon writing, but seriously now — do us both a favor: Take a vacation. An article in the New York Times reports that recent research has shown the…
Noah built an ark. Rabbi Shaul Shimon Deutsch built a Borough Park taxidermy museum in a brownstone and filled it, he claims, with every animal mentioned in the Torah — 350 specimens in all. An article in The Brooklyn Ink details Torah Animal World, which will be complete once Deutsch puts the finishing touches on…
Michoel Streicher, a 50-year-old mentally ill Orthodox cantor who was popular (in certain circles) in the 1990s and calls himself “The Michael Jackson of Jewish music,” was sentenced yesterday to one to three years in prison for stealing $36,000 from a fan, according to the Daily News. The victim, 55-year-old Judy Burstein, gave Streicher the…
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