After judges from the Sydney Beth Din are found in contempt of court by the NSW Supreme Court, David considers the wider implications of this precedent, and how Beth Dins need to adapt to their role when embedded in secular society [Times of Israel and J-Wire]
In The Orthodox Jewish Guide to Following Australian Rules Football, David reflects on the history of Orthodox Jews’ efforts to follow the local sport that is played on Saturday/Sabbath. With the finals coinciding with the High Holydays in September each year, and this year the grand final taking place on Yom Kippur itself, the intensity is raised a notch or two. [Times of Israel and J-Wire] The follow-up article One Day, Two Grand Finals compares the…
David Werdiger launches a strident critique of Assaf Gavron’s opinion piece published in The Age and SMH as yet another example of playing the victim game and absolving others of responsibility for their actions [J-Wire].
David Werdiger writes about the media reaction to Israeli PM Netanyahu’s comments about Hitler and the grand mufti, which has descended into a silly debate over who did more to hurt Jews [Times of Israel and J-Wire].
To say it’s been a difficult year for our community would be a gross understatement. The Royal Commission case study exposed us to the world, warts and all. The evidence from victims and their family members confronted us with their pain and suffering. The fallout has ripped our community apart, and opened up the deep rifts that lay festering beneath the surface for years. As we stand at the end of the Jewish year, we can look…
The Holocaust survivor generation are slowly leaving us, and as they age, a new syndrome has developed: the ‘age-downgrade’. David Werdiger explains why is this happening. [Times of Israel and J-Wire]
Following the Royal Commission hearing into the Yeshivah Centre in Melbourne, David Werdiger has written several articles. With a lot of the focus on the Jewish law of “mesirah”, David points out that criticism of the AFP’s handling of the Bali Nine is actually the asserting the very same legal principle. “Knowing that a citizen would be subject to a legal system far more severe than our own, the AFP would not hand someone over to that jurisdiction”….
David Werdiger reflects on how terrorist attack in Sydney indicates a paradigm shift in the way radical Islam attacks the West. “The attacks that have been taking place in Israel recently, and quite possibly the one happening in Sydney now, are symptomatic of a major shift in the practice of terrorism … The proponents of terror have learnt and adapted their methods, and more importantly have taken a leaf out of Western culture’s book in their fight against us.” [J-Wire and Times…
Following the brutal attack against shul-goers in Har Nof, David Werdiger firstly reflects on the early morning minyan he attends and how we respond to the attacks. “The inciters call the brutal murder of innocents in a house of worship ‘heroic’ and say it is a ‘natural reaction to Zionist criminality’. What sort of culture rationalizes vicious murder as a ‘natural reaction’ to anything? The question we must ask ourselves is: what is our ‘natural reaction’…
With a creative thought experiment, David Werdiger asks why the Muslim world has not been vocal in its opposition to the Islamic State (IS, ISIS, ISIL). [Published on Times of Israel, J-Wire, Jews Down Under, and Algemeiner].
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