Posted on: May 28th, 2008

We are now getting down to the homestretch as we wrap up the Democratic primary and begin the race to the November general election. We will be electing the next president of the United States, and almost everyone expressing an opinion, informed or uninformed, believes the Democratic candidate will be Barack Obama.

Posted on: May 28th, 2008

It's always a revelation when a world-renowned intellectual attacks religion as silly and juvenile only for us to discover that his or her own personal life might have greatly benefited from a commitment to the biblical values that they so casually dismiss.

Posted on: May 28th, 2008

There is a recurring theme associated with Jerusalem: that of Jewish unity. Jerusalem is the City of Peace, though it has been conquered thirty-six times in its long history. King David wrote, “The built-up Jerusalem is like a city that is bound together” (Psalms 122:3). The Talmud elaborates on the expression “bound together” that Jerusalem “is a city that binds one Jew to another” (Jerusalem Talmud, Bava Kama 7:7).

Posted on: May 28th, 2008

Every spring, a pair of swans build their nest on an island across from our home. For ten years we have seen them arrive faithfully. The mother sits on her nest for weeks. If she wants a little break, the father takes over. The nest is always in exactly the same spot, and every day we look out our window to check on the progress of this little family.

Posted on: May 28th, 2008

The laws regarding converts to Judaism are among the most astounding in the Torah. They teach us that any non-Jew who truly and earnestly seeks to join the Jewish people may do so.

Posted on: May 21st, 2008

My Feb. 22 Jewish Press op-ed article “Losing Rational Orthodoxy” seems to have struck a nerve. Much of the feedback was positive, some was negative, and even more was intensely ambivalent.

Posted on: May 21st, 2008

“Rebbi.” One of the most beautiful words in the Hebrew language is “rebbi” – “my Torah teacher.” It is a title earned through Torah knowledge the teacher must possess and then transmit, through love, to his students. The word is said with respect and affection of the highest nature. It bonds rebbi and student together like no other word.

Posted on: May 21st, 2008

President George Bush is singing his swan song. There are several verses to that song. One verse has decidedly Middle Eastern overtones. And that explains the president’s trip last week to the Middle East, occasioned by Israel’s 60th anniversary.

Posted on: May 21st, 2008

Shmuel Katz, a”h – underground leader, member of the first Knesset, publisher, historian, biographer and essayist – passed away May 9 in Eretz Yisrael at the age of 93. Katz was the most trenchant political thinker modern Israel has produced. His career was marked by a selfless political integrity; indifferent to personal advantage, he sought only the good of Israel and the Jewish people.

Posted on: May 21st, 2008

I have long believed the world would be much better off if Hollywood airheads would stick to entertainment and never pretend to be intellectuals, spouting off with their "ideas" about politics, diplomacy, etc.

Posted on: May 19th, 2008

I find the Orthodox Jewish approach to problem-solving fascinating, in a dark sort of way. It consists of a series of steps that looks something like this:

Posted on: May 14th, 2008

Recent congressional hearings about the destruction, by Israel’s air force, of a Syrian-North Korean nuclear facility has shed light on the mutually beneficial nature of U.S.-Israel relations.

Posted on: May 14th, 2008

In the course of a lengthy essay in The Atlantic, writer Jeffrey Goldberg quotes an encounter he had with a Gazan imam named Ibrahim Mudeiris, who had just delivered a sermon in which he had described the Jews as “the sons of apes and pigs.”

Posted on: May 14th, 2008

A recent CNN poll ranks President George W. Bush as the most unpopular president in modern American history. The key figure is not Bush’s 28 percent approval rating – which, though dismal, is not as poor as the all-time lows set by Harry Truman (22 percent) and Richard Nixon (24 percent) – but his disapproval rating, which has soared to 71 percent. No president had ever cracked the 70-percent ceiling.

Posted on: May 14th, 2008

Numerous historians consider the Spanish Civil War that broke out in July 1936 a prelude to World War II. Spain, with a population of 28 million, became a bloody battleground of conflicting forces testing their arsenals in preparation for the battle of the giants that was to emerge shortly.

Posted on: May 14th, 2008

The other day I met a young Orthodox Jew who approached me in Manhattan to say hello.

Posted on: May 7th, 2008

Patience is something we sometimes have too little of, but when it comes to history it is often a trait we need in abundance.

Posted on: May 7th, 2008

Earlier this month, at a Los Angeles event for the national African-American fraternity Kappa Alpha Psi, the keynote speaker launched into an anti-Semitic tirade – directed at the fraternity’s guest of honor. The shocking episode shows just how far we’ve strayed from the original vision of the civil rights movement – and how far we have yet to travel to realize that vision.

Posted on: April 30th, 2008

The Democratic Party’s preoccupation with the question of when America will leave Iraq rather than with how America will win in Iraq reminds me of how and why this nearly lifelong liberal and Democrat became identified as a conservative and Republican activist.

Posted on: April 30th, 2008

It’s about 6 p.m. on May 14, 1948, and a friend and I are leaving a UNESCO conference in San Francisco to catch the train back to Berkeley.