Category: <span>Rav Zev Shandalov</span>

Blaming the Victim

When I was in college, there was a relatively new book we were required to read in a Criminal Justice class: “Blaming the Victim,” written by William Ryan (1971). In his book, the author coined the phrase, which became the title of his book (“blaming the victim”), which then became …

#fakejews

We have read so much about “fake news” over the past many months, that the title of this post came to me as I kept looking at the stream of news I was reading on Facebook. A little context. For quite a long period of time, there have been many …

The Moral and Ethical Bankruptcy of the Haredi Leadership in Bet Shemesh

I recently posted an article in which I made a suggestion about how, perhaps, the residents of Bet Shemesh can come together to try to resolve the ongoing religious conflicts and violence in their community. I wrote this as a total outsider, but with the intention of trying to voice an …

Is It Time to Eradicate the “Built-In” Sadness in Judaism?

Allow me to preface this with a very important statement. What I am proposing here is merely in theory. The Shulchan Aruch (the Code of Jewish Law) indeed prescribes various fast days and days in which joy is curtailed. Therefore, any comments or ideas here cannot be taken as a …