Orthodox Conundrum

With the United States presidential election only hours away, I wanted to offer a supporter of each major presidential candidate the opportunity to explain why Jews in general, and Orthodox Jews in particular, would be better off supporting either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris for president. To that end, I invited two politically involved Orthodox rabbis, Rabbi Pesach Wolicki and Rabbi Benjamin Ke...

Today I'm talking about something that I've spoken about before, repeatedly, both on this podcast and on my Substack, Orthodox Conundrum Commentary : the problem of a large number of Chareidi, or ultra-Orthodox Jews, who receive army exemptions, usually (though not always) because they're learning in yeshivot. Why am I talking about this again? Haven't we dealt with this issue too many times alrea...

As we complete our seventh season of the Orthodox Conundrum, we're pleased to present a classic episode from three years ago, in which Professor Joshua Berman of Bar Ilan University discusses academic Bible study, Biblical criticism, and Orthodox Judaism. It was a very interesting episode, which raised crucial questions that Orthodox Jews need to confront, as well as suggestions of how we should d...

"Today marks one year since one of the worst days of all of our lives, October 7th. I actually was unsure of how to record an appropriate episode; what, exactly, could I add to the conversation? What is there to say that hasn't yet been said? And how can I relate it to the season in which we find ourselves, right in between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur?" Fortunately, Scott was joined by the outsta...

Later this week we will celebrate Rosh Hashanah, also known as the Day of Remembrance, Yom HaZikaron. According to Chazal, Hashem (so to speak) remembers us on this day for the good… and we, too, should look at those people who set sterling examples for us over the past year, and try to learn from their deeply meaningful lives. One of those people whose life was exemplary was Gavriel Bloom, zichro...

One of the beautiful aspects of Torah Judaism is its insistence on  eilu v'eilu divrei Elokim chayim - that two different and even potentially contradictory approaches can both represent the words of the living God. Opening our minds to differing ways of seeing Torah - that, in the words of many ancient texts, there are seventy facets to the Torah, and accordingly endless ways of explaining its id...

We stand in the middle of the month of Elul, and are moving quickly towards Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur - days largely spent in the synagogue in prayer. Throughout those days as well as the rest of the Ten Days of Repentance, we ask that God grant us a year of life, goodness, and peace. While we have so much to be thankful for, we may be forgiven for looking at the past year - and the prayers we...

Many people often talk about addiction and dependence; and in doing so, they may use those terms inexactly. When it comes to gambling, however, those words are, unfortunately, correct. Problem gambling is a growing problem in the United States - particularly online gambling, which has been growing exponentially since the Supreme Court decided, in 2018, that the Professional and Amateur Sports Prot...

Scott recorded this interview with Dr. Noam Weissman on Monday afternoon, the day after we learned about the terrible execution of six hostages soon before they were discovered by the IDF, presumably in order to make sure that they did not make it back home alive. And today, Hamas continued its psychological torture by saying that it will release video of these six victims. The pure, unbridled evi...

This podcast is being released less than a day after the Israeli army preemptively struck thousands of Hezbollah rocket launchers in Lebanon, doing so just fifteen minutes before those launchers were supposed to fire hundreds of missiles into northern and central Israel. Thank God that as of now, Israel clearly won this exchange. We don't know what tomorrow will bring, but for now we can breathe j...

The October 7th massacre, and the subsequent war against Hamas, other Iranian proxies like Hezbollah and the Houthis, and Iran itself, have caused many people throughout the Jewish world to reconsider what Israel means to them, and what kind of society Israel should create. Many continually return to the idea that Israel should be a light unto the nations, an Ohr laGoyim, or a Medinah l'Mofet, an...

"What does Eichah have in common with climate change deniers, anti-vaxxers, Holocaust deniers and those that claim that the 2020 presidential elections were stolen?" Rabbi Dr. Joshua Berman sent this to Scott, who was intrigued and immediately invited him back onto this podcast to discuss what he meant. More than anything else, we need a way to relate to Megillat Eicha in a world which seems so di...

Sometimes it's called a move to the right. Other times it is seen as a rejection of lax religiosity. Some people think of it as an admirable commitment to serving God as best as possible. Others decry it as representing an unacceptable change from traditional Jewish practice. All these and more are reactions to the unquestionably real phenomenon of greater stringency in the Orthodox world. Determi...

This is a rush-release bonus episode of the Orthodox Conundrum, to help us all get to the bottom of what happened yesterday at the military detention center at Sdei Teiman.  We will learn what the nine arrested soldiers were accused of, the manner that they were arrested, and the reason for the protests of numerous right-wing members of Knesset. What does it mean, and why should you care? What is...

One of the most difficult issues facing Modern or Centrist Orthodox Jews today is the question of how to increase and encourage the participation of more women in leadership roles, while also working within the halachic parameters that set limits on how extensive those leadership roles are allowed to be. When we add two thousand years of socialization where women's leadership was quite rare, along...

For the past two thousand years, Torah observant Jews have acknowledged that our greatest scholars deserve respect, and have an extraordinarily deep and broad understanding of the vast sea of the Torah sheba'al peh, the Oral Law. In recent times, however, proper respect for talmidei chachamim has often morphed into a pseudo-idolatry of gedolim, where they are seen not just as great experts in Tora...

68 years ago, Rav Soloveitchik zt'l identified the timidity of Orthodox Jews as representing a failure to respond to the miracle of renewed Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel. Today, tragically, we seem to have the opposite problem. In 2024, Israel has a religious establishment which has completely lost its sense of shame, and is not only involved in nepotism alongside a lust for money and p...

This podcast is dedicated לעילוי נשמת אלעזר בן ישראל, a man who accepted the vicissitudes of life with a simple and pure faith. What does it mean to believe in God? This question is absolutely fundamental to Jewish life and living - yet many people feel uncomfortable discussing God at all. In our educational institutions, we often have a broad curriculum that includes subjects such as Talmud, Chum...

When you learn Torah, do you consider yourself to be in dialogue with Chazal?  According to Scott's guest, Simi Peters, a key element of learning midrash aggadah is being able to become participants in a conversation that began thousands of years ago and continues today. But in order to do so, we need to become students of midrash: learning how to approach it, understanding both the methodologies...

Schools which identify with the Modern Orthodox world and espouse a Centrist Orthodox hashkafa, nevertheless will sometimes hire teachers who profess a Hareidi worldview. In some ways, this is a welcome development; breaking down the barriers that separate our various communities is generally a good thing, and we should be pleased when we discern a willingness to engage Jews with different viewpoi...

(This episode was originally released on Septetmber 26th, 2023, but its message is perhaps even more relevant now, after October 7th and its aftermath, than before. Scott will be back with a new episode next week.) Megilat Kohelet is one of the most difficult books in Tanach: it jumps back and forth between conflicting assumptions, it lacks any obvious narrative or thematic structure, and its stat...

We're approaching the holiday of Shavuot, when we celebrate and commemorate the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai. The Rambam explains  that our belief in Torah and in Moshe is predicated upon the fact that all of us were present at Sinai, where we together heard God talking to Moshe. And we have a longstanding tradition as well that God did not stop speaking once ma'amad Har Sinai was over; in f...

Is the Israeli army taking care of its soldiers? That's a question with a potentially painful answer. Daniel Mael has helped donate over 13,000 helmets to IDF soldiers, along with thousands of vests and other equipment - and he argues that the army's behavior in procuring equipment has been nothing less than scandalous. In fact, he claims, the Israeli army knows that its protective equipment is of...

Just as many young people who are not religious become Orthodox, so do many young Orthodox Jews leave Orthodox practice behind. Colloquially, this is often called being "off the derech" - that is, off "the" way of traditional Torah practice. The phenomenon of Orthodox Jews becoming less classically religious is real, and it's important to think about why it happens. Is it simply a question of disb...

Any discussion surrounding tzniut ( loosely - and, perhaps incorrectly - translated as "modesty") is inevitably fraught with challenges and difficulty. Indeed, there are few topics in Orthodoxy that are as triggering to so many people. Rabbi Moshe Simkovich offers a traditional yet unique approach to tzniut , and he attempts to redefine the concept altogether, moving it further away from quantitat...