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• A High Holidays plea: Listen to each other on Israel’s nation-state debate

  August 24, 2018 1:20pm

  (JTA) — The High Holidays are approaching. It is a time when Jews worldwide join together in the spirit of camaraderie, pouring out their hearts for a good new year. But the lead-up this year has been different, often pitting Jews against Jews in bitter controversy. Rosh Hashanah 5779 arrives with the passage of legislation…

• RCA must stand behind the conversions performed by its members

  November 20, 2016 7:05pm

  (JTA) — Let us begin with the facts: Converts whose conversions were conducted according to halachah, or Jewish law, are 100 percent Jewish. In the eyes of God and Torah, they are full Jews, just as Jewish as any born Jews. Their Jewishness is not contingent on the Israeli Chief Rabbinate or anyone else. Halachic…

• Pope Francis must insist Auschwitz church be moved

  July 28, 2016 11:02am

  (JTA) — This week, Pope Francis will be making a pilgrimage to Poland, visiting Auschwitz – the notorious death camp in Poland where 1.1 million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust. Auschwitz is comprised of two camps: Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II, also called Birkenau. Birkenau is the actual “theater of death,” where the vast…

• Op-Ed: Saying kaddish in Charleston for slain church members

  July 7, 2015 3:41pm

  Rabbi Avi Weiss goes to Charleston to mourn the slain victims of the attack on an African-American church, and gets help saying the Mourner’s Kaddish for his father.

• Op-Ed: Centralizing authority on conversions hurts converts

  November 13, 2014 3:23pm

  Israel recently moved to decentralize conversion. In America, just the opposite is happening. And the co-founders of a new modern Orthodox rabbinical organization think it’s a problem.

• Jacob Birnbaum was the unsung father of Jewish freedom

  April 11, 2014 2:06pm

  Jacob Birnbaum, a founder of the Soviet Jewry movement, was a heroic, legendary figure, writes Rabbi Avi Weiss.

• Op-Ed: How to stop killing in the name of God

  October 20, 2013 11:42am

  The Jewish doctrine of faith requires us to challenge God when his mandates confront our ethical sensibilities, Rabbi Avi Weiss writes.

• Op-Ed: Celebrating 25 years of freedom for Natan Sharansky

  February 8, 2011 2:42am

  Natan Sharansky’s freedom is not only a celebration of his great courage; it is also a celebration of his wife Avital’s formidable moral and spiritual strength, Rabbi Avi Weiss writes.