When Torah Meets the Headlines

In 2013, a young man named Simcha Lauer told his future wife that most schools were teaching Torah wrong. She remembers thinking, "Big shot—do you have a better idea?" As it turned out, he did. His approach was deceptively simple: instead of treating Torah as a subject separate from the world, he would use the news people were already reading to show them what the Torah actually says. That conviction became the engine behind a decade of writing, three books, and a method that has now reached thousands of Shabbos tables.

The latest result is Contemporary Questions, Halachic Answers, a two-volume set organized by the weekly parsha. Each chapter opens with a real news story—a police officer faking a traffic stop to help a man propose, a lawyer refusing to answer Sean Combs' phone calls on Shabbos—followed by a halachic question. The reader is invited to pause and discuss before diving into the Torah perspective, which draws on sources from the Gemara through contemporary poskim. The structure mirrors the way Lauer used to lead Friday night gatherings: present the story, ask the question, then let the conversation unfold.

A Method Built Over Years