-
Jan 14, 2025 | 
jewishreviewofbooks.com | Akiva Schick |Elli Fischer |Matti Friedman
Avid Reader Press 304 pp., $28 The destruction of the State of Israel has never been so popular. Murderous Hamas terrorists infiltrate the country, Iranian and Hezbollah rockets blanket the sky, student protestors call for intifada, and American Jewish writers turn the land over to welter and waste. Or a black hole.
-
Jun 5, 2024 | 
jewishpress.com | Elli Fischer
This term reminds me of both the wonderful and terrible things that are produced by Columbia University. Starting with terrible: Using a term like “milchig” in a publication like The Jewish Press is undoubtedly “Ashkenormative” in that it presumes that all readers have familiarity with the term, when in fact Jewish communities use many different terms for dairy products. “Ashkenormativity” is something that we Ashkenazim would do well to unlearn.
-
May 23, 2024 | 
jewishreviewofbooks.com | Elli Fischer |Akiva Schick |Brian Horowitz |Leonid Katsis
Last year, and as far back as anybody can remember, though perhaps not as far back as many think, hundreds of thousands of Jews flocked to the town of Meron in Northern Israel on Lag BaOmer, the thirty-third of the forty-nine days that are counted from the second day of Passover until Shavuot. They light huge bonfires; binge on free food; and drink, pray, and sing themselves through the night into a kind of group ecstasy. It is the world’s largest annual Jewish pilgrimage festival.
-
Apr 18, 2024 | 
jewishpress.com | Elli Fischer
Title: Letter and Spirit: Evasions, Avoidance, and Workarounds in the Halakhic SystemBy: Rabbi Daniel FeldmanYeshiva University Press/MaggidTitle: Circumventing the LawBy: Dr. Elana Stein HainUniversity of Pennsylvania PressThe Torah commands us to rid our homes of leaven products before Pesach, and our Sages delineated two primary mechanisms for carrying that out: physical removal and destruction of chametz, on one hand, and the disavowal and nullification of chametz, on the other.
-
Mar 27, 2024 | 
jewishpress.com | Elli Fischer
Currently, the world is saying about us: that we have no real connection to Eretz Yisrael; that we are colonialist usurpers; that Ashkenazim are non-indigenous “White Europeans” and descendants of Khazar converts who colonized settlements in the Middle East with the intent to dispossess the natives; that Hebrew was a dead language until the Zionists began reviving it 150 years ago, etc.
-
Dec 13, 2023 | 
jewishpress.com | Elli Fischer
I have learned to be skeptical whenever someone is compared to Beis Hillel. Why? Because whenever there’s a disagreement, about anything, the more restrictive, inflexible approach is almost automatically associated with Beis Shammai, and the more permissive approach with Beis Hillel. Nobody ever wants to be associated with Beis Shammai. Have you ever been to a college campus with a Shammai House? Has a rabbi, or group of rabbis, ever compared their approach to that of Beis Shammai?
-
Nov 30, 2023 | 
jewishreviewofbooks.com | Elli Fischer |Kate Elinsky
In the first two installments of this series, we saw how Rabbi Ovadia Yosef permitted the exchange of imprisoned terrorists for hostages, despite the possibility, even likelihood, that the released terrorists would harm or kill further innocent victims. In the next part of the responsum, Rabbi Yosef discusses such an exchange under the rubric of pidyon shevuyim (the redemption or ransom of captives).
-
Nov 21, 2023 | 
jewishreviewofbooks.com | Elli Fischer |Akiva Schick |Abraham Socher |Richard Wolin
When Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef was asked whether one could exchange hostages for imprisoned terrorists in the midst of the Entebbe crisis, he began by arguing that to do so would not violate the prohibition on sacrificing one person in order to save another. We read that even if the released terrorists went on commit further acts of violence, the exchange itself would be an act of rescue, not an act of collaboration with evildoers.
-
Nov 2, 2023 | 
jewishreviewofbooks.com | Elli Fischer |Akiva Schick |Matti Friedman
After the hijacking of Air France Flight 139 but prior to the IDF’s daring Entebbe rescue on July 4, 1976, the families of the hostages asked Israel’s Sephardic Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef (1920–2013) for a halakhic opinion whether on Israel could release terrorists in exchange for the Entebbe hostages. Rabbi Yosef had an encyclopedic knowledge of rabbinic literature and was one of the most brilliant halakhic thinkers of the twentieth century.
-
Oct 18, 2023 | 
jewishpress.com | Elli Fischer
Like many Israelis, over the past 10 days, numerous friends and relatives from the U.S. have reached out to ask how we are and what we need, to express sympathy and condolences, and to let us know that they are thinking about us. We appreciate it, and it really makes a difference. The thing is, I live in Modiin, far from the northern and southern battlefront. Only once have I had to run to our reinforced room. Most Israelis, in fact, are in no immediate danger.
