End this personality cult

It has been a bad year so far for Orthodox rabbis. Across the channel, French chief rabbi Gilles Bernheim quit after admitting plagiarising texts and faking his academic credentials while, last weekend, similar charges were levelled by Maariv against the Israeli chief rabbi, Yonah Metzger.

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Israel’s blaming of the ‘shrew’

Where does the buck stop in the new Israeli government? You might think it was with the prime minister. Not so. Judging by the hysterical media reports over the past six weeks, it stops with Benjamin Netanyahu's wife, Sara, who is apparently responsible for most of his bad decisions in the coalition negotiations.

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Crisis ‘worse than JFS’ looms

How fair are entrance criteria to Jewish schools? It's a question that has continually challenged Anglo-Jewry, culminating in the traumatic JFS case.

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Job for the cops, not the rabbis

How should the Orthodox community handle allegations of sexual abuse? The scandal currently rocking London's Charedi world provides a classic example of how not to do it.

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Plan for Mirvis’s successor now

Rabbi Mirvis's appointment as the next chief rabbi has been greeted warmly by the community. He clearly has the respect of his rabbinic colleagues, the affection of his own congregation and he is popular in other synagogues, too.

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Arrest threatens Orthodox too

Last month, Anat Hoffman donned her talit and began leading a prayer service for women at the Western Wall. As she hummed her first tune, she was interrupted by a policewoman demanding that she wear her talit like a scarf. She complied and continued. During the Shema, she was interrupted again, this time by a policeman telling her to lower her voice.

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Help! I’m an internet addict

I realised that I had a problem straight after Yom Kippur went out. I had spent the last two hours of the fast with a splitting headache and was desperate for something to eat. So, as soon as the clock struck 19.37, I ran to the kitchen - to find my mobile phone and check my email. After 25 hours, supper could wait.

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Shuls that are too big to manage

This is a painful and unusually personal column, because it concerns the complete breakdown of management at my shul and the partial breakdown of community relations.

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Stop this teachers’ brain drain

Has Britain got Jewish educational talent? Yes - but it is slipping away and no one seems to care.

I reached this conclusion after interviewing Jeremy Stowe-Lindner, JCoSS headteacher, who is departing for a community school in Australia next month.

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Don’t push our dutiful daughters

It feels silly, on the Jubilee weekend, to be discussing women's roles in Orthodox Judaism. This country and its church have been headed by a woman for 60 years, and the public seems perfectly pleased. Yet here we are, still debating whether a woman can be president of her shul. It's ridiculous.

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Pollard the spy is no Zionist hero

Early this month, Israeli President Shimon Peres sent a personal missive to Barack Obama, asking for clemency for convicted spy Jonathan Pollard. The very next day, Obama rejected the plea, practically by return mail.

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Time to rethink the Tanach?

How much of the Tanach is literally true?

This was the focus of a talk at the London School of Jewish Studies last week. The panel - Menachem Leibtag, Shmuel Klitsner and Jonathan Bailey, all leading American-Israeli modern Orthodox scholars - was in agreement. The Torah is God-given, but not all the stories necessarily happened exactly as written.

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Israel's real Charedi revolution

Is Israel really in danger of being overrun by Charedi religious extremists?

It certainly feels like it.

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What are the Orthodox afraid of?

It would be easy for those of us who belong to the Orthodox community to be angry at the furore surrounding the Big Tent.

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Meet my daughter, Jonathan

With 10 weeks - perhaps less – to go before I have a new baby, it's hard to say I've done much to prepare.

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This was a morally repulsive argument

Let us give Larry Derfner the benefit of the doubt that he does not wish to see terror attacks inflicted upon his fellow Israelis. That much is clear both from the original blog post and from his subsequent apology.

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Not rioting, just dreaming

After a month in Israel, I'm about ready to join a demonstration against the cost of living here myself. Even armed with pounds (admittedly not worth as much as they used to be) this is a really expensive country.

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Drop-outs can repair the rifts

Since the 1960s, the Orthodox world has been justifiably proud of the ba'al teshuvah movement - the large numbers of assimilated Jews who have become frum, bolstering the observant community.

Until relatively recently, however, the flow of people moving the other way, out of Orthodoxy, has been the movement's dirty little secret.

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