I wish to clear up a few points.

My Halakhic sources for this essay were my Rabbi, Rav Mendy Herson of Basking Ridge and haRav haGaon Yosef Kalatsky of the Yad Avraham Institute in Manhattan.

"My point was that the subject of 'traditional Jewish ethics' is, at this very moment, studied and discussed just as closely and passionately as 'political science' and 'comparatve literature' are in the secular world. (Although, perhaps not quite as closely and passionately as in Passaic.)"

No argument there.

"Apparently, all that Mr. Hirsch had to do was state that he was an 'observant' Jew who, when praying, wears tallit and tefilin, for Salon's editors to recognize him as some sort of authority, or 'reasonable voice,' on traditional Jewish ethics."

I think that the editors of Salon realize that most people reading this article don't really want to go through the volumes of Responsa on this subject. It's difficult reading even for those who passionately believe in it as Truth.

"In the real world of people even casually familiar traditional Jewish learning, simply stating that you're an 'observant Jew' who wears tallit and tefillin gets you absolutely nowhere. It doesn't mean anything."

True to a point, but really misleading. The fact that you have not gone through the formal education process certainly does not disqualify you from participating. Otherwise, why would haRav haGaon Dovid Schustal have told over a Moshal (parable) in my name, in Yiddish, in front of over 100 other scholars, at Beis Medrash G'voha in Lakewood, the premier Yeshiva in North America? Why would I have given a Drasha (Torah lesson) to several Roshei Yeshivos (which went over very well, by the way)?

One of my favorite and proudest memories of when I first started leading a Frum lifestyle is when I expounded on a new insight on Miriam's relationship to Moses by using textual analysis. My cousin's husband, himself a Rov, stared in bewilderment, then said, "That's not bad, not bad at all!"

"Love or despise Liberman. But Hirsch really has no idea what he's yammering on about. He really doesn't."

Show me where I am in error al pi Halakha, I will be happy to fix it. You're free to think whatever you'd wish of me.

"Stephen Hirsch misuses the word adultery. Under Halakha, adultery applies only to married women. The Jewish Encyclopedia defines adultery here: http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=865&letter=A

Sexual intercourse of a married woman with any man other than her husband.

Thus, under Jewish law, Clinton did not commit adultery with the White House intern."

Well, there are 2 separate standards of adultery within the Halakha, just as a bacon double cheeseburger is completely Kosher for a non-Jew. eyesay and the Jewish Encyclopedia use Rashi's understanding of the Negative Commandment. Almost all other commentators hold that it is a much broader term, referring to all sorts of sexual transgressions.

However, for non-Jews, having sex of any kind outside of a civil marriage is considered adultery, according to Torah.

My point in writing this article was two-fold: one, to show that there really is no place for "Church Lady" types in Torah, and two, to give secular people a peek into an American subculture otherwise usually ignored.

"Anyone can convert to any religion that he or she chooses at any time in his or her life. Or choose to take seriously for the first time the religion that he or she was born into.

But when you do so late in life, you forfeit the opportunity to speak as an expert on the matter. You forfeit the opportunity to make jokes. And you forfeit the opportunity to tell others why they are wrong, based on the rules of your new-found beliefs."

That's definitely not true in the Torah world. Rabbi Akiva, one of our greatest scholars, hated Torah scholars so much that he wanted to bite them like a donkey, rather than a dog, since a donkey's bite breaks bones. He made Tshuva at age 40. Reish Lakeish, a brilliant contributor to the Gemorrah, was a brigand before he made Tshuva. Onkelos, another great scholar, was the nephew of a Roman Emperor (Marcus Aurelius I believe) before he converted.

My apologies to those non-Orthodox Jews who are currently reading D'varim in Shul on Saturdays. There are those who read the Torah on a 3 year cycle instead of the normal 1 year cycle, that's what I was implicitly referring to.

And my heart-felt thanks to Salon for fixing the title. I was very unhappy with it, and my apologies to Senator Lieberman. Let me be clear: while I don't agree with most of his politics, and I wish that he drop out, I will state for the record that from what I can see, Senator Lieberman is a very good Jew, a choshiveh (holy) guy. It seems counterintuitive, but the more choshiv you are, the less slack that you are cut.

I respectfully disagree with Andrew Berman's analysis on whether Senator Lieberman saved President Clinton's Presidency.

The idea that since this is so 1998 puzzles me. It is in living memory; the impeachment/putsch, the 2000 and 2004 elections are gaping wounds to our country that will not heal by ignoring them.

Finally, the idea of not getting rewarded from the rebuke is not to be taken ad absurdum.

I was never so cold in my life, as when we walked home from Café Campus to McGill in January after the Metro was done for the night. 'Sti tabernac, caaalice!