In this past weekend’s issue of the Jewish Journal , Dennis Prager wrote a column entitled “Siddur Baseball” , in which he bemoaned how lengthy shabbat morning services are – they are not only long, but boring, etc. The shul I attend here in Long Beach has figured out how to handle shortening services. Read More »
Drew Kaplan 
A blog in which Drew Kaplan describes recent goings-on in his life, topics in halakhah, other Jewish topics of interest, Washington Heights, musings on life, etc.
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Hillel & Twitter Follow-Up
- This is a follow-up post to my post last week regarding Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life not operating a solid Twitter account -On Friday morning, while waiting for a cab to the airport, departing from the conference, I met and spoke with Jeff Rubin , who is in charge of Hillel’s communication. Read More »
Shepping Nahas for Rabbi Weiss: Musing on “Kiddush Open Orthodoxy” at the Hillel Institute
This week, Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life is holding its inaugural Hillel Institute , along with a Pre-Hillel Institute for new Hillel hirees that took place prior to the conference, which I am attending. Read More »
Tabling for Hillel at the ZBT Convention
Yesterday, my wife (who is the Director for Beach Hillel) and I manned the table representing Hillel at the national ZBT convention in the Marriott in Manhattan Beach . Hillel was one of a half-dozen organizations tabling, most of whom were Jewish (Young Judea , Chabad on campus , and Maccabi World Union along with OmegaFi and Movember ). Read More »
Excerpts from David Patterson’s 2009 May Smith Lecture on Redemption, Anti-Semitism & the Messiah
On Sunday morning, while ellipticalling, I read David Patterson ’s lecture “Though the Messiah May Tarry: A Reflection on Redemption in Our Time,” 1 and I wanted to select a few interesting passages from it: one on belief , one on anti-semitism/anti-messianism , one on redemption , and one on time and the Messiah . Read More »
Crown Heights Riots, Protesting, and Harmony
Yesterday, Shemspeed released a press release that starts off with the title “20 Years After the Crown Heights Race Riots, Black and Jewish Community Leaders Endorse DeScribe’s “Harmony” Music Video as a Constructive Tool for Unity and Racial Harmony in Brooklyn” with a link to the aforementioned music video . Read More »
Some Elements of Jewish Spiritual Activism
One of my job responsibilities is to be an activist, primarily on campuses. The amusing thing is that even though I went to YCT , I was one of the least inclined students to attend rallies, etc. Read More »
Gahanna & Gehenna
I grew up in a suburb of Columbus, OH called Gahanna and it was a nice place. Gahanna, in the local native American language means “three in one” , since there are three rivers that converge into one river. Read More »
IRF Conference 2010
While away on my recent trip out east, where we attended a couple of friends’ weddings, a bris milah of a baby boy of our friends’, and saw friends and family, I also attended the annual conference of the International Rabbinic Fellowship (IRF). Read More »
Father of the RaMA: An Excerpt about Rabbi Moses Isserles’ Father from a PhD Dissertation
From Rabbi Asher Siev, “The Period, Life and Work or Rabbi Moses Isserles” (PhD diss., Yeshiva University, 1943), 8-10 (the endnotes from the original dissertation are at the bottom): R. Israel, son of Joseph, the father of R. Moses Isserles was a descendent of a prosperous family in Kracow . His father, R. Read More »
Can’t Believe She’s Serious
By now, many people have seen Helen Thomas ‘ OUTRAGEOUSLY ignorant recent comments . What is utterly appalling, aside from the amazing ignorance she displays, is that for someone who has been reporting on international events for decades in the White House press corps, she should have a sense of international history. Read More »
Drew 3.0: Now Wearing Contacts
After spending the last 19 years of my life with glasses, I decided that I wanted to make the switch over to contacts. Although I had tried at some point during adolescence to try contacts, I had immense difficulty getting my finger near my eye and gave up quite quickly. However, I’ve been feeling for a while I wanted to move beyond glasses. Read More »
Red Sea, Reed Sea, or Something Else?
Once again, in the recent issue of Jewish Action (Spring 2010), Ari Zivotofsky has an excellent brief article. This one is “What’s the Truth about . . . Read More »
Eye for an Eye for Something Else?
Coming across the verse עין תחת עין – “eye in place of an eye” (Ex. 21.24 & Lev. 24.20 ), I would always read in commentary nearby that it would be barbaric to understand it literally (along with the other surrounding statements). Read More »
Driving Driving
Having spent very little of the past 5+ years driving in New York City (aside from the occasional rental car for a trip), a big facet of my life out here in California is driving around. Read More »
Starting to Read the NT
After arriving to the great sunny land of California, my benefactor handed me a bunch of literature with information about what proselytizing Christians might say, including many quotations from the NT . After reading some of it, I realized that all the scriptural verses were not in their context. Read More »
Purim Costume Provenance
With the holiday of Purim coming up this weekend, one of the common practices associated with the holiday is dressing up in costume . Read More »
Brief Interview with Patrick Aleph of Punk Torah
Below is my interviewing at Jewlicious Festival 6.0 of Patrick Aleph of Punk Torah & Indie Yeshiva . Read More »
Day 2 of 2009 AJS Conference
Sorry about the delay in getting to the rest of the 2009 AJS conference , which I had begun by blogging about the first day . Read More »
Mezuzah on My Mind
A week ago, Rachel and I were in LA and bought a bunch of mezuzot for the house we are renting for at least a year in Long Beach (since there are a lot more doorways in a 3-bedroom house in California than there are in a two-bedroom apartment in New York City) and put them up that evening. Read More »
Day #1 of AJS Conference 2009
Yesterday (Sunday), I attended the first day of the 41st annual conference of the Association for Jewish Studies which happened to be conveniently located nearby, in LA. Read More »
Association of Jewish Studies Conference #41: I’m There
Just as I attended last year’s Association of Jewish Studies conference (albeit only the second day and the third day), I am at this year’s AJS conference. Granted, it’s a lot easier to get to, since I’m about a half-hour’s drive or so from where we are living.I hope to be able to type up what’s been going on, because it’s good stuff. Read More »
Orthodox American Rabbis Visit Desecrated Mosque in Kfar Yasuf (Press Release)
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEOrthodox American Rabbis Visit Desecrated Mosque in Kfar YasufKfar Yasuf, Israel – December 15, 2009 On Tuesday, rabbis representing Open Orthodox communities in the United States and Israel visited the community of Yasuf, Read More »
International Rabbinical Fellowship Press Release: “New Orthodox Rabbinical Group Established”
International Rabbinic Fellowship347 West 34th Street New York, NY 10001 Press ReleaseContact: Rabbi Jason Herman, Executive DirectorPhone: 917.751.5265Email: jlherman@jlherman.netFOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE9 A.M. Read More »
More on Meiri
A few weeks ago, I mentioned that I attended an AJWS event where Professor Moshe Halbertal spoke to past attendees of their Rabbinical Student Delegation trips (of which I was one, having gone to El Salvador), wherein, although he spoke about Rabbi Menachem Meiri,* he nicely framed the larger discussion. Read More »
Is There a Jewish View on Same-Gender Marriage In the Public Sphere?
With the votes in Maine and Washington today, I saw some stuff on Twitter that made me think about it, especially Alan’s tweet that says “Doesn’t understand these anti-marriage-equality folks in DC: why do they think their (dumb) religion has say over CIVIL marriage? Jews don’t. Read More »
My Visit to the Hospital Today
Today, I went to Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital for the first time ever (which is interesting since this is the main hospital in the area (and I ran past it many times when I used to be able to jog) and I have lived here for five years and my last week here). My pain started earlier this week. Read More »
Criticism and Acceptance of the Shulhan Arukh
On Thursday, while waiting at the doctor’s office, I came across the following quotation from Asher Siev’s 1943 PhD dissertation “The Period, Life and Work of Rabbi Moses Isserles” (Yeshiva University) on page 73 concerning criticism of the Shulhan Arukh:R. Moses Yafeh, a pupil of R. Read More »
On Our Cultural Epistemic
I found the following quote to be tremendously interesting (from here): we denizens of the third millennium CE make constant recourse to specialists whose art has no basis in empirical discovery or other Enlightenment values. Read More »
On the Rabbinic Concept of Exegesis: A Quote from Faur
A somewhat interesting rabbinic statement that is not easy of which to make heads or tails is found on page 5a in the Babylonian Talmud in the tractate of Berakhot:א”ר לוי בר חמא אמר ר’…Read More
Moving to California: Heading to the Other Coast For an Exciting Job
After living in New York City for over five years, my wife, my daughter, and I are moving out to Long Beach, California! And even though we just moved into a new apartment less than two months ago,…Read More
A Medieval Changing of Judaism
Please Don’t Call This Month “Tober” Nor “Heshvan”
Yesterday and today are the first days of the month of מרחשון (Marheshvan) on the Jewish calendar. As to what it means, Rabbi Ari Zivotofsky wrote that is probably derived from its location in
The Two Washington Heights Eruvin Connect!
This past shabbas was our first shabbas in Washington Heights in a month and was the first time we got to take advantage of the connecting of the two eruvim in Washington Heights. What made this
Considering Basic Human Rights in Competition with Associational Rights: An Evening Conversation with Professor Moshe Halbertal
“In the Name of”?: A Brief Clarification of Citation in the Babylonian Talmud
I am going to start off by dropping some knowledge: when the term משום pops up before a tanna’s name after another rabbi’s (usually a tanna, but sometime early amoraim), that is “in the name of”, Read More »
A Musing About Sukkah: Taking Sukkot Seriously
This week is the annual Jewish festival of Sukkot (“booths”). God commanded the Jews that “בַּסֻּכֹּת תֵּשְׁבוּ, שִׁבְעַת יָמִים” (“in booths you shall sit for seven Read More »
Vlog Post On What I Am Doing This Fall
2009-10-02 02:55 JMT Read More »
Moved
Three weeks ago, we moved to a new apartment. And although we moved only two blocks away, it was still quite a lot of work to first get things packed and then to get them over to the new place (take Read More »
Yeshiva University Officially Opens the New Glueck Center
Last Sunday, I attended Yeshiva University’s opening of the new Jacob and Dreizel Glueck Center for Jewish Study, which opened three years after they broke ground. It started off with speeches from Read More »
