Nowadays, no one who keeps kosher would ever consider buying meat without certification. No one would say, ‘well, this looks kosher to me, I’m sure it’s fine.’ We want to achieve the same standards when it comes to mezuzahs.

“We should be banning phones as a community—all of the schools should be on the same page,” says Rabbi Mordechai Shifman . . .

The study aims to develop a more robust and wide-ranging understanding of the different ways and reasons people leave Orthodoxy.

When those raised Orthodox don’t stay Orthodox, it is seen—and indeed deeply felt—as a communal failure, as if one of the central functions of the community itself is broken. 

Parental religious misalignment—when a husband and wife have varying levels of observance and faith—is not exactly an unknown phenomenon in the Orthodox community. 

The feeling of hypocrisy this engendered—and “secondary consequences” such as bullying from peers—eventually became a factor in their decision to leave the community. 

What the study reveals about relationships with religious figures

. . . the experience of leaving [the community] is not binary. Very often, connections remain that are real, important and personal and shape people’s lives.

After forty years of marriage, the freedom was at times exhilarating, but when I came home, nobody was waiting for me. The house was as quiet as snow. I wasn’t prepared for this—how could I be?

Dangerous onions, “kosher” gelatin, and more!

Misconception: It is a time-honored custom to eat a milchig (dairy) meal on Shavuot. 

Megillat Ruth Mesorat HaRav—Wintman Family Edition 

Is there any way, then, for frum Jews to salvage social media? If the answer were no, this book would not need to have been written. 

What does it mean for a Jewish child to have ADHD?

These are among the most complex questions in modern times, and Rabbi Rakeffet explores and explains them with remarkable clarity. 

Birkat Yitzchak: He’arot LeMasechet Sanhedrin, fourth edition; Pursuing Peshat: Tanakh Parshanut & Talmud Torah

The parking lot layers issue a challenge to us: “You say you are Shabbos observant?  Know, like we did, that there is more to Shabbos than how you observe it.”

In a political landscape often defined by ambition, self-promotion and partisanship, Senator Joe Lieberman, whose first yahrtzeit was Adar 17, stood apart.

Everyone is hungry but who has time to bother with lunch when there is so much else to do and nothing good to eat anyway?!