A new issue has been published of The Journal of Halacha and Contemporary Society:
- Shemittah by R. Dovid Cohen (of the CRC, not Cong. Gevul Yaabetz) — General overview of the issues surrounding contemporary shemitah, quoting almost exclusively from Charedi sources.
- Co-education — Is It Ever Acceptable? by R. Aryeh Lebowitz — Very comprehensive discussion of the halakhic issues.
- Spousal Emotional Stress: Proposed Relief for the Modern-Day Agunah by R. Dr. A. Yehuda Warburg — Arguing that a religious court may impose financial penalties on a recalcitrant husband for inflicting emotional stress on his wife.
- Triage in Halacha: The Threat of an Avian Flu Pandemic by R. David Etengoff — Reviews the positions of the Chazon Ish, R. Moshe Feinstein, R. Shlomo Zalman Auerbach and the Tzitz Eliezer regarding who is given medical treatment first when there are multiple patients (cohen before levi?, man before woman?, etc.)
- Making Berachot on Non-kosher Food by R. Elli Fischer — Surprising conclusion that most situations today would require reciting the blessing.
- Cherem Rabbenu Gershom: Reading Another Person’s Email by R. Alfred Cohen — Discusses various permutations and the publication of private correspondence of Torah scholars, but surprisingly not the forwarding and bcc’ing of e-mails. Two recent and relevant sources are R. Aaron Levine, Moral Issues of the Marketplace in Jewish Law, pp. 358-365 and R. Asher Meir, The Jewish Ethicist, pp. 217-219 and here.
