Freedom of Religion is not Freedom of Taxpayer-Funded Discrimination

I am fed up with people claiming that the Freedom of Religion of the Catholic church and Boston’s Catholic Charities have been violated by the state’s insistence that they obey anti-discrimination laws. Which part of, “If you want to discriminate, then don’t take the state’s money,” do they not understand?

“Modern Orthodox not welcome”

Visit http://english.thekotel.org/. Note the section header “Bar/Bat Mitzva”. Click on it. Search the entire section for any mention of celebration of a Bat Mitzva ceremony at the Kotel. If you find one, let me know, because I sure couldn’t. I’ve therefore just sent the Western Wall Heritage Foundation, the owners of the site, a message… Read More »

MacOS X — so right, and yet so wrong

My wife and I finally caved in and bought a new computer for her, an iMac G5. Her old, slow PowerMac running Mac OS 9 just couldn’t cut it anymore. The slowness, crashes, hangs, and nondeterministic behavior just finally got to be too much to bear. Also, now that the kids are starting to use… Read More »

“Papers, please.”

On the 9th of December 2005, Deborah Davis will be arraigned in U.S. District Court in a case that will determine whether Deb and the rest of us in the USA live in a free society, or in a country where we must show “papers” whenever a cop demands them. One morning in late September… Read More »

Rabbi Mordecai Tendler case?

While searching for material on the Web about the agunah problem to answer a question someone asked about whether excommunication is still used within Judaism, I came upon news I hadn’t previously heard, concerning the expulsion earlier this year of Rabbi Mordecai Tendler from the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA).