Rabbi Yehoshua Looks made aliyah with his family in 1996. He has an MBA from Harvard with 20 years senior management experience in the United States. Yehoshua is the COO of Ayeka, a philanthropic adviser, and consultant to non-profit educational organizations. He is also a student and teacher of Torah.
Yehoshua Looks is a contributing blogger for Haaretz Jewish World.
Narrow, judgmental perspectives continue to drive Jewish youth away from practicing. It’s time to realize that Orthodox Judaism can be simultaneously religious and inclusive.
If American hospitals embody the melting pot, where everything blends together with conformity, Israeli hospitals showcase our distinctiveness and represent a vision of what our society might yet become.
In New York, the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community and the Catholic Church both oppose a bill to lift the statute of limitations on abuse claims. With some flexibility, there could be a solution we can all get behind to protect our kids.
How comfortable, I wondered, should I feel in this space?
With tough love, graduates can help put college campuses back on track.
Threatened by a 'new world' of partnership minyans, women rabbis and an egalitarian prayer space at the Western Wall, Orthodox rabbis are taking more stringent stances in areas where their predecessors once showed leniency.
It is especially during times of darkness like this that it is important for Jewish and Muslim clerics to take the reins and lead us to a peaceful solution.
By banning female spiritual leaders and casting Orthodox rabbis who associate with them as heretics, the Rabbinical Council of America and Agudath Israel assumed a level of religious authoritarianism that they do not deserve.
Watching the violence back home, I recall the various ways we have learned to cope with terrorism since immigrating to Israel, and realize why this time it's different.
A new look at atonement could give us access to communal – and even national – achievements.
When God sends us a personal message, we don't always know how to interpret it, or whether to interpret it at all.
A bill backed by Shas seeks to outlaw independent kosher supervisors, claiming this would be in the public's interest. Who are they kidding?
In denigrating non-Orthodox Jews, Israel's religious affairs minister, David Azoulay, was addressing his own community.
There is a crucial difference between Orthodoxy in Israel and abroad; the former is experiencing an evolution, whereas the latter is stifled by the threat of other denominations.
The Rabbinate should set their political interests aside and let Israelis elect their own leaders.
As U.S. courts evoke constitutional law to lift bans on gay marriage, Jewish authorities face the challenge of applying the eternal laws of the Torah to modern realities.
Memory and mourning are intertwined, each necessary to the healing process.
No religion can claim it holds the absolute truth for all - which isn’t to say that the Jewish mission isn't special.
The barbaric execution of a Jordanian pilot at the hands of ISIS leaves no doubt, if there ever was any, that we are confronting boundless inhumanity.
In Rehavia, my neighborhood, the stereotypical labels of 'religious' and 'secular' belie a much more nuanced reality.