A FailedMessiah.com reader has launched a new blog, Only a Jew:
I am a religious Jew who is deep inside [the haredi Orthodox world] and I watch in horror as our people are torn apart from the inside and I can no longer be a silent observer like my friends and neighbors who resign themselves to the rally cry that "you can't fight city hall"…
I am a member of the Jewish Community and until very recently a very proud one. My father is a graduate of the Mirrer Yeshiva and Columbia University. (bet that doesn't happen too much anymore) He has smicha (Rabbinical Ordination) from the Mirrer and has finished Shas (Talmud) 4 times. He is not Chassidish but would qualify, as would most of my extended family as Charedi. I have loads of relatives living in Lakewood (double digits) and "learning" in Kollel there. For the life of me I don't get it. What I do know is that my dad, the Columbia graduate, who spent zero days in Kollel, can learn my lakewood relatives under the table. I don't get it.…