Reviews in Brief – Summer 2025
Rabbi Hershel Schachter’s Collected Writings, I
By Rabbi Hershel Schachter
Independently published
2024
222 pages
Rabbi Hershel Schachter is one of the leading rabbis of our time, serving in many important communal roles. He is both a prominent educator and a leading halachic authority who devotes much of his time to guiding rabbis around the world with difficult problems. Many of his Hebrew writings have been published in his three sefarim of collected articles. However, until now, his many English articles remained scattered across the various journals in which they were originally published decades ago.
When Rabbi Schachter writes, he brings to each issue a comprehensive view of the entire rabbinic literature throughout the ages. A friend once explained Rabbi Schachter’s approach like this: “You know how when you have just fully researched a topic, you have all the texts and views at your fingertips? Rabbi Schachter is like that with all topics, all the time.” With this mastery of multiple layers of information, Rabbi Schachter elucidates key passages and views, whether from common Talmudic texts or obscure contemporary responsa. With remarkable clarity, Rabbi Schachter guides readers through complex halachic thought, often taking fascinating detours into unexpected issues that illuminate the subject at hand.
Rabbi Hershel Schachter’s Collected Writings I begins the important task of publishing his English articles in book format so a broader audience can gain access to these important writings. Most of the articles in the volume were originally published in the 1980s, a decade when Rabbi Schachter addressed in writing some of the most complex questions of modern Jewish life. Among the issues in the work are the viability of modern metropolitan eruvin, family planning (originally published with the encouragement of Rabbi Yaakov Kamenetsky), the vexing problem of the halachic status of Ethiopian Jews, who may be accepted as a member in a synagogue or a student in a Jewish school, and more. The volume includes a few more recent articles on important communal issues, including how many days of yom tov to observe when visiting Israel, why women may not be ordained as rabbis and how to tie the techelet strings on tzitzit.
Of great interest are the two early articles about Israel—regarding the mitzvah to move to Israel and the question of trading land for peace—which merge Jewish law and thought to present a compelling account of Religious Zionism based on traditional sources. Together, these articles represent Rabbi Schachter’s casual mastery of the broad array of Torah genres and his ability to merge them into a seamless worldview.
1.8 Million Minutes and Counting: Celebrating & Contemplating My First 40 Years in Jewish Broadcasting
By Nachum Segal with Yaffa Storch
Independently published
2024
234 pages
I used to have a non-Jewish boss who had a long commute into Manhattan. He once mentioned to me how much he enjoys listening to Nachum Segal’s JM in the AM radio show while he drives to work. “I don’t understand everything that is said,” he told me. “But I enjoy the sense of community.” This colleague correctly identified what Segal and his team have built over the past forty years of broadcasting—community. In his memoir, 1.8 Million Minutes and Counting, Segal does more than tell the very interesting history of JM in the AM, which began as a Jewish music morning radio show and has since expanded to the twenty-four-hour online Nachum Segal Network (NSN). He describes how a community arose to help him spread Jewish pride, which in turn built a worldwide community of listeners, including me.
The book begins by telling the story of how, in 1983, a Yeshiva College undergraduate radio host became the unlikely morning host at Upsala College’s New Jersey radio station, putting WFMU on the Jewish community’s radar. Due to a miscalculation, WFMU’s antenna had an unusually broad coverage area well beyond the college campus. Its legal defense included the fact that it provided a unique community service, particularly for the Jewish community via JM in the AM. That partnership lasted for decades as Segal became a familiar voice in thousands of Jewish homes.
1.8 Million Minutes and Counting describes how JM in the AM became a crucial stop for Jewish celebrities and politicians courting the Jewish vote. Presidents and prime ministers, rabbis and singers, activists and organizers all make sure to visit Segal and speak directly to his large audience of engaged listeners. The book is replete with anecdotes of famous people who recognized the power and reach of JM in the AM. The show includes a lot of Jewish content, and not just music. For decades, Segal’s listeners have learned Torah from Rabbi Benjamin Yudin and Rabbi Dovid Goldwasser. Segal is generous in giving credit to others so that over the years, not just these rabbis but everyone involved with JM in the AM, the team that supports him in every aspect of the show, have become household names.
While Segal takes his job very seriously, the book is light-hearted. It is filled with many letters from listeners, full of laughably contradictory advice. Many of the letters convey heartwarming messages describing how the show has helped people get through difficult periods in their lives. Like the show itself, the book is full of faith and hope, uplifting while enlightening and entertaining. In that way, 1.8 Million Minutes and Counting successfully captures the community spirit that Segal has built in his first forty years of leadership.
Hifkadti Shomrim: The Journal of the Israel Police Rabbinate, vol. 1
Edited by Rabbi Reuven Kamil
Independently published
2023
420 pages
In 1951, Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz published a much-discussed article titled “Shabbat and the State” in which the controversial thinker argued that traditional halachah cannot guide a sovereign state that needs an army, police and critical industries that function seven days a week. Rabbi Moshe Tzvi Neriah replied at great length in a series of articles that he combined into his Kuntres HaViku’ach—The Treatise of Debate, which he included in his 1992 book, Tzenif Meluchah. Among Rabbi Neriah’s responses is that halachic solutions can only be proposed when there are religious public servants willing to implement them in practice. I suspect that Rabbi Neriah would take great pride in the hardcover, book-length journal of the Israel Police Rabbinate, Hifkadti Shorim, and what it represents.
With a growing religious presence in the Israel Police Force, there is a growing rabbinate—what in America we call chaplaincy—to guide and assist religious police officers. This impressive volume consists of thirty-three articles by the editor, individual chaplains and the chief rabbi of the police force, Rabbi Rami Berachyahu. The first half of the book discusses the role of a religious police force in a secular state, both in general and particularly why it is necessary to operate on Shabbat and holidays. The remainder consists of a variety of articles about specific challenges facing religious police officers. These include halachic justification for undercover work, guidelines for honoring Shabbat with special clothing while wearing a police uniform, searching for missing persons on yom tov and taking preventive measures on Shabbat to avoid an emergency situation. There is also a fascinating exchange between Rabbi Berachyahu and the former chief Sephardic rabbi of Israel, Rabbi Yitzchak Yosef, about police officers wearing body cameras on Shabbat.
This book is not just about the theory of religious policing on Shabbat and not just about a multitude of specific police-related halachic issues. Primarily, it is a work of confidence that halachah has relevance and resonance in the modern world. The Torah applies in all times and places and serves as a constant guide in the complex world in which we live.
Rabbi Gil Student serves as director of Jewish Media, Publications and Editorial Communications at the Orthodox Union.