As I march around town grasping my Hirsch Siddur, I sometimes am asked, “Are you a Yekke?” to which I answer, “I am an American Yekke.” This statement draws puzzled looks as if I had said that I were an Algonquin Italian. “America is a Germanic country and my family has lived here for a century,” I say, attempting to explain but provoking usually even more puzzlement. For those who want to hear more, I present my case. Consider the…
We have seen on this blog several posts that cite examples of censorship and text manipulation in literature within the Orthodox community. Generally, the practitioners of this tendentious editing have been described here as being among our brethren from the right wing of the community. However, the act of text manipulation happens as well among our brethren from the left wing. One notable example occurred recently in an article that discussed the theory of evolution. The article, Nathan Aviezer’s “The…