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AgunotWednesday, February 24, 2010 | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Ta'anit Esther, the traditional fast day preceding Purim, will be observed tomorrow. In recent years it has been designated as an international day of study, reflection, and calls to action on behalf of agunot, literally "anchored" or "bound" women. In biblical and talmudic law, a marriage is dissolved upon certain proof of a spouse's death or upon the granting of a divorce (get) at the husband's discretion. Each of these halakhic requirements can leave a woman languishing for years, tortured either by her husband's uncertain fate or by his malicious will. Though technically the term agunah is reserved for the former condition, it...
The Heart or the Head?Wednesday, February 10, 2010 | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
In recent decades, "brain death," the cessation of all neurological activity, has increasingly supplanted cardiac-respiratory failure as the most widely accepted medical criterion of death. This definitional shift has helped mitigate the often ruinous toll on families of caring for patients whose hearts can be artificially kept beating in the absence of even the simplest brain function. It has also saved lives, by facilitating the process of preserving and donating organs for transplantation. Fundamental to Judaism is the idea that human beings are created in the divine image. This affirmation of human dignity finds practical expression in the thoroughgoing prohibition on murder...
Editors' Picks
The Patrilineal Predicament Naomi Zeveloff, Forward. Nearly three decades after the Reform movement's landmark decision to accept patrilineal Jews, statistics confirm that the worst fears of critics have come true.
The Rabbi Who Writes Too Much Gary Shapiro, Forward. Just how pronounced is the graphomania of Rabbi Eliezer Shlomo Schick? One professor found 954 titles by Schick in the catalog of the National Library of Israel—and those were just the ones in Hebrew.
Rabbinic Malpractice? Josh Yuter, Yutopia. Why did it take forty years for Orthodox Judaism to go from the "Lieberman Clause" to the strikingly similar "Halakhic Prenup"? It seems it was more concerned with delegitimizing Conservative Judaism than with addressing the agunah problem.
Darwin and the Rabbis Michael Kay, Thinking through My Fingers. We're told that "religion" and "science" went head to head over evolution. But nineteenth-century rabbis, including Samson Raphael Hirsch, Hermann Adler, and Abraham Isaac Kook, were all willing to engage with Darwinism.
Crowdsourcing the Constitution Walter Russell Mead, Via Meadia. "We the People" indeed—a new commentary on the U.S. Constitution draws its inspiration from an unlikely source.
With These Words Fred MacDowell, On the Main Line. With one salty term of consecration (possibly an obscene rhyme), a Jewish man may have betrothed a woman. In 1823, the rabbis of London had to deal with the consequences.
Disjecta Membra Benjamin Balint, Los Angeles Review of Books. Not for nothing was the Cairo Genizah called "the Living Sea Scrolls": its discoverers revolutionized the study of Mediterranean Jewish life at the very moment that it was drawing to a close.
Creaming the Competition Elli Fischer, Jerusalem Post. Ruling Haagen Dazs ice cream to be non-kosher, the Israeli chief rabbinate misconstrues Moshe Feinstein's position and once again demonstrates its contempt for Diaspora Judaism.
The Wages of Criticism Zev Eleff, Jewish Review of Books. The 18th-century scholar Aryeh Leib Ginsburg was a harsh critic of earlier halakhic authorities. Did they finally exact revenge on him? And, if so, who's been covering up the story?
Cancelling Conversion Gil Student, Torah Musings. While many Orthodox rabbis have become too willing to annul conversions, even the non-Orthodox world recognizes that there are some circumstances in which a conversion must be overturned.