Avi Shafran

Abraham (Avi) Shafran is a Haredi rabbi who serves as the Director of Public Affairs for Agudath Israel of America. Agudath Israel was established to meet the needs and viewpoint of many Haredi Jews. He is also a contributing writer to Cross-Currents, an online journal of Orthodox Jewish thought and opinion. He was also once involved with Ami, an Orthodox Jewish weekly newsmagazine, but took leave of that periodical and currently pens a weekly column in Hamodia, a popular daily catering to the Orthodox community.
Shafran is widely known in the Jewish world as a writer and lecturer. He is the author of a weekly column that is syndicated in the Jewish media in the United States and other anglophone countries, as well as in English language publications in Israel. Many of his articles are directed at a wider Jewish audience, including less observant Jews, and are designed to explain this tradition.
He has been critical of the Jewish Conservative movement's claim of halachic legitimacy. He publicly opposes the possibility of Israel recognizing the legality of Reform and Conservative personal status ceremonies (i.e. marriage, divorce, and conversion).
His columns are often available at the Jewish World Review and regularly posted at Cross-Currents.com and at RabbiAviShafran.com.
Shafran was a teacher and principal at The Providence Hebrew Day School in Rhode Island prior to his appointment at the Agudah organization. He currently resides in Staten Island, New York.
He is the author of Migrant Soul, "the story of a descendant of full-blooded American Indians who married an assimilated Jewess" and then began a "spiritual quest" that ended with both as Orthodox Jews. He is also an author of JewThink, a book on basics of Judaism. With his father, he co-authored "Fire, Ice, Air", the elder Rabbi Shafran's memoir of his years during World War II in Eastern Europe and a Siberian labor camp, and his subsequent, and ongoing, career as a rabbi in Baltimore. Most recently, Torah Temimah Publications published "It's All in the Angle," a collection of selected essays by Rabbi Avi Shafran
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