I took a first year philosophy class in university which went chronologically from the ancient Greeks to the modern Europeans. The medieval philosophers were very interested in God-proofs, which I found entirely uncompelling. This wasn’t because I was so sophisticated, or understood the weaknesses in their arguments (which I have since learned are many). It…
Category: Modern Orthodoxy
The Mirror of Leadership
The timing was fortuitous. We were driving into New York to see family, and listened to the 18Forty podcast interview with Rabbi Yissy Kaminetsky, the Rosh Yeshiva of DRS, an all-boys yeshiva high school in Long Island. Now, when I finish a podcast I just go straight to the next one, but my wife has…
Reboot: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up – Jerry Colonna
One of the genres I tend to read is leadership books, and they come in all shapes and sizes. Some are more prescriptive and researched based (e.g. The Human Side of School Change, by Robert Evans), others written from the experience of the authors (e.g. Onward, by Howard Schultz about Starbucks). Reboot: Leadership and the…
Finding Ruchniyut
On my recent trip to Israel I was privileged to spend a couple of hours with Rabbi Yishai Zinger. Rav Dov Zinger, his father, started a yeshiva high school in Israel that has a very intense focus on sparking religious commitment (Rav Zinger also does a lot of other interesting things, especially around tefilah, across…
Missing Idealism
In my early 20s I chose to learn in a Haredi yeshiva. I was deeply attracted to the idealism of that world. Though over time I took some distance from that world and its hashkafot, though its idealism, and the desire for it, stays with me. On my recent visit to Israel that sense of…
A Torah Life is Inefficient
I recently heard a couple of provocative, and ancient ideas, in an interview with the entrepreneur Kunal Shah on the Farnam Street Podcast. He said two things that stuck with me deeply. He said that a, “spiritual life is inefficient,” and “standardizing is the enemy of soulfulness.” I want to think through each one here,…
Not a Regular Book Review: My Quarrel with Hersh Rasseyner, by Chaim Grade
Normally book reflections go on the Netivot Monday Morning Reading email. This one, however, is only on my blog. The reflection is both too long, and the book too different from what I normally write about, that keeping it here seemed the more natural place for it to reside. Onward. Reading Chaim Grade is a…