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.
The tension in defining boundaries between religious and secular life and practice remains with us millennia after Jason the high priest built a contentious gymnasium in Jerusalem.
We left our countries of birth and our families abroad to live in the Jewish holy land. But today something was taken from us that we never expected to lose.
Why does pornography, particularly Internet pornography, pervade modern life?
From Women of the Wall’s monthly prayer meetings to Simhat Torah celebrations, every time a woman has contact with these holy scrolls, controversy seems to follow.
A practical guide to elevating our souls throughout the sabbatical year.
Unlike the community rabbis who failed to help David Menachem Gordon bring those who sexually abused him to justice, the rabbis who dealt with his apparent suicide acted compassionately. Only then, it was too late.
During Operation Protective Edge, Jews from the political left and right, and from secular to ultra-Orthodox united in acts of loving kindness. Must it take war with our enemies to find peace within our people?
At a time of religious fasting and mourning, will Jews and Muslims let our national narratives send us into a pit of hatred? Or will we find it in our hearts to empathize with the plight of the other, fixing ourselves and those around us?
Driverless cars are comparable to Shabbat elevators. Would Jewish law therefore permit using them on the day of rest?
Filling our teenagers' heads with Jewish law and simplistic answers to complex issues like homosexuality and slavery only serves to disconnect them from the faith. We need a new approach to Jewish education based on active listening and safe space.