Did you hear that Rabbi Weil convened a special OU meeting/retreat of some sorts in Los Angeles with six of the top rabbis in the country? What went on there? A source says: "It was a rabbinic training event for nearly – and newly – ordained rabbis. Jonathan Rosenblatt, the rabbi fr...

Zev writes on hirhurim: Very poorly done survey, obviously prepared by women and from a woman’s point of view. For example, a question asks how much of the following affects your marriage: drugs, internet time, inapprpropraite internet sites, gambling, illegal activities. Clearly these are MOS...

Rabbi Steven Weil is leaving Beth Jacob to run the OU. Moses emails: "In a shul that generally limits its kiruv effort to machers, it is interesting that it has thrown its Israel campaign dollars behind the OU’s campaign for spiritual ammunition for soldiers." Rabbi Weil has always e...

By Rabbi Pinchas Stolper is the founder of NCSY, the Orthodox Union's (OU) youth group. and was the long-time executive vice president of the OU. He is a hero to the Orthodox generally, and to the kiruv movement specifically. “Kiruv� is the movement to bring non-Orthodox Jews to Orthodoxy. Liter...

I got a sneak peak at excerpts of David Suissa’s column in next week’s Jewish Journal: In most suburban congregations, other than the occasional blintz offering, no one really talks about Shavout, but last week I had lunch with an old Moroccan woman who let me in on a secret – she ...

Bozoer Rebbe emails: Luke, In your page on R. Weil you made the following statement:   As he did in Detroit (creating much controversy), Rabbi Weil immediately started kicking people out of Beth Jacob to create a safe community. Though I’ve never been a member of Young Israel of Oak Park,...

"There will be blood," I worried Wednesday morning and emailed Amy Alkon for a ride to David Rensin’s party tonight at the LA Press Club. Twice I’d emailed the club my RSVP and eight times my emails came back to me thus: "This is an automatically generated Delivery Status ...

On Purim, the National Conference of Synagogue Youth (NCSY) hosted a Purim party in Los Angeles that four security guards could not control. Two police squad cars had to be called in around midnight and a police helicopter to control drunken and rioting NCSY teens who were setting off firecrackers u...

The National Council of Synagogue Youth (NCSY) held a Purim party Thursday night at an Orthodox shul in Pico/Robertson. There were four security guards on hand and they couldn’t keep the kids under control. They were racing around the shul opening doors (to let in their friends who weren’...

Instead of competing against each other, Jewish outreach groups should join forces to battle assimilation Rabbi Levi Brackman There has been a real transformation of the Orthodox Jewish landscape recently, but until now I have been only vaguely aware of it. Of course I knew that there are many diffe...