Gil Student - Writing, Blogging and Publishing

Writing, Blogging and Publishing

Student's writings appear mainly on the Internet on his blog, Hirhurim Musings. They also appear in newspapers and journals on a variety of Judaic topics including Jewish medical ethics and Yeshiva University.

The Hirhurim blog was ranked "Best Jewish Religion Blog" and #3 in categories "Best Series" and "Best Overall Blog" for 2005 by The Jerusalem Post and has been cited in The Wall Street Journal for declining to run an ad for "Letter to a Christian Nation" by Sam Harris. He has received other recognition for his blogging and views by Yeshiva University's student newspapers The Commentator and The Observer.

Student owns and operates a small Jewish publishing house, Yashar Books, that, in addition to traditional Orthodox scholarly works, distributes the writings of Orthodox thinkers who defy the accepted norms of publications in the Haredi world; the latter include works that were previously distributed by prominent publishers such as Feldheim.

His publishing company has undertaken to distribute the works of Rabbi Natan Slifkin whose books were banned by many Haredi rabbis as well as other works that are not openly approved by the Haredi mainstream rabbinate. In explaining his defense of Slifkin and his willingness to publish Slifkin's books, Student wrote in The Jewish Press, "The Jewish community is no stranger to conflict. Some controversies, however, transcend their local concern and reverberate in ways originally unintended. I believe we have witnessed such an event with the recent controversy surrounding three books about Torah and science by Rabbi Natan (Nosson) Slifkin. The bans promulgated on his books have come to represent more than just disapproval of those specific works; they have come to signify the lack of centralized rabbinic authority in our globalized world and the increased empowerment of the individual afforded by the Internet."