▪ Musings on Torah, and the Issues of Our Time
▪ R Turk: Modern Orthodox Halacha?
▪ R Wieder: Re-Evaluating Talmud Torah for Women?
▪ R Gordimer: Down the Rhetoric, Clarifying the Obscure
▪ R Oppenheimer: Homosexuality and the Torah Community
▪ The History and Dating of Onkelos
▪ Estimated attrition rate for American Charedim of 20-25%: The American Jewish future: More Shmuley Boteach than Woody Allen?
▪ On the faithless: Apostate
▪ Does belief in God enhance gratitude? Here’s what psychology suggests(h/t FT)
▪ Struggling with some of the issues discussed recently by R Yitzchak Breitowitz: My Pastor is on the Ashley Madison List
In R Oppenheimers article he seems to not want to group homosexuality into the group of sins that are rational such as thievery murder etc. However it can be argued very strongly that there is hardly anything more against rationality and biology than homosexuality. It’s definitely not a “chok” and was never classified as one as far as I know by anyone.
I think R’ Wieder, and most of the respondants, miss R’ Willig’s point. I didn’t see him raising an issue with women learning gemara in and of itself. Rather, he is suggesting that the issue has become entangled with that of feminism in a way that the Rav either hadn’t realized or wasn’t yet true.
We are now in a world where you hear arguments for ordinaining women based on it being a natural progression from the decision to teach them gemara and the number of women with expertise. Learning isn’t being understood by everyone to be about learning, gender power issues were mixed into the discussion.
We may be losing more than we gain — compared to other possible equally demanding and inspiring curricula. Or more precisely, R’ Willig didn’t actually suggest a decision; he said there is a pro-vs-con here we need to look at and discuss.