MoChassid links to two articles about talking in shul. R. Moshe Weinberger points out that the statement “When you make G-d comfortable in your home, you can make yourself comfortable in His” is ludicrous and contrary to halakhah.

My article “The Ongoing Conundrum of Yeshiva College” in current issue of The Commentator.

Now you know how I had access to an early copy of the new issue of The Torah U-Mada Journal and knew that R. Yitzi Blau tears apart some letter-writers. I give in. He’s right and I’m wrong.

My heart goes out to those affected by the terrible disaster that occurred this weekend. Frankly, I don’t know what to say or do. I am just blown away by the enormity of the tragedy.

There are currently two main types of semikhah. One is called a heter hora’ah and the other has no real name but is colloquially referred to as a rabbi’s driver’s license. The former is a license to issue halakhic rulings. The latter is essentially a letter stating that the holder is worthy of holding the title rabbi and being a ...

I spent this past Shabbos in the heart of Brooklyn, attending a popular Agudath Israel synagogue. On Friday night, the rabbi, an up-and-coming figure in the Agudah world and a very popular speaker, related to the entire congregation the following question he was recently asked: Someone had bought a new computer and it arrived functioning less than perfectly. He called ...

Is Ya’akov Avinu still alive? From the way some describe it, he is even though the Torah says that he died. See here (PDF) and here (PDF) for lengthy citations of standard commentators who state that Ya’akov Avinu did die, as the Torah states.

When I started this blog, there was a genuine reason for writing it under a pseudonym. However, that reason is long gone and the fake anonymity — most readers already know my real name — is getting tiresome. From here on, the pseudonym Simcha is being retired.

The following is from Nitzahon Yashan, translated by Dr. David Berger as The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages, p. 60: A certain apostate argued that the Hebrew verse, “Until Shilo comes and to him…” (ad ki yavo Shilo ve-lo [Gen. 49:10]) contains an acrostic for Jesus (Yeshu). The answer to this is in the very same verse, for ...

Denis Diderot (1713-1784) was a self-important philosophe who arrogantly thought he knew everything. This story is one of my favorite anecdotes. It is taken from The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes, p. 168: In 1773 Diderot spent some months at the court of St. Petersburg at the invitation of the Russian empress, Catherine the Great. He passed much of his ...