Posted on: October 21st, 2009

The loyalty of most American Jews to the Democratic Party and its current leader, President Barack Obama, is not in question. Yet while the ideology of the majority of their members and contributors is no secret, most major Jewish organizations, not to mention synagogues, attempt to stay out of partisan controversies, even while often espousing liberal causes.

Posted on: October 21st, 2009

I watched in horror, shock and disgust along with much of America as the likes of Libyan President Muammar Khaddafi and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad descended on New York to spread their anti-Semitic, anti-Israel and anti-American vitriol throughout the halls of the UN and on our news talk shows.

Posted on: October 21st, 2009

When Columbia University granted tenure to Associate Professor Joseph Massad, the school turned its back on the Jewish community.

Posted on: October 21st, 2009

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent passionate address to the United Nations was very powerful and long overdue. Netanyahu’s words came the day after Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s most recent senseless anti-Semitic rant, in which he once again dusted off the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to accuse the Jews of holding the international community within its nefarious clutches, while also recalling the infamous 1975 UN resolution equating Zionism with racism.

Posted on: October 14th, 2009

Last week, in return for a video – not the freedom of a kidnap victim, but a video of a kidnap victim – Israel freed 20 Palestinian prisoners. This has to stop.

Posted on: October 14th, 2009

St. Louis University is the latest institution of higher learning to demonstrate that free speech on campuses begins and ends according to how well that speech conforms to existing political orthodoxies.

Posted on: October 14th, 2009

One of four Courage in Journalism awards to be presented later this month by Christiane Amanpour and Irshad Manjie, among others, will go to the Israeli journalist Amira Hass, whose unremitting critique of Israel serves as a veritable blood libel against the Jewish people.

Posted on: October 14th, 2009

Ask the average Jew on the street and he’ll tell you: Israel needs America in order to survive. Indeed, this view is so entrenched in the Jewish community that few dare question it. Just as a baby needs his mother and an injured person needs his crutches, it seems obvious to many that Israel needs America.

Posted on: October 7th, 2009

Since creating EndTheMadness seven years ago I have received all manner of correspondence, and it should come as no surprise that for every gratifying e-mail I receive there are plenty more that are disturbing in one way or another. But what if I asked you to guess which e-mails disturb me the most, even momentarily shaking my optimism that there really is hope for our society?

Posted on: October 7th, 2009

On January 20, President Obama’s longtime friend and adviser David Axelrod appeared at the Jewish Community Inaugural Reception and told the crowd he was there to do “a little kvelling.”

Posted on: October 7th, 2009

We call it “Simchas Torah.” It is the culmination of our entire holiday cycle. Pesach and Shavuos, then Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Sukkos all lead up to one enormous day of simcha. Why do we associate simcha with Torah? And why is it the culmination of everything?

Posted on: October 7th, 2009

One of the most remarkable and poignant things about the World Gathering of Jewish Holocaust survivors and their families in Jerusalem in 1981 was a wall plastered with notes from survivors and their children looking for lost family members and friends.

Posted on: September 30th, 2009

There is more than a bit of gallows humor in the following Torah thought, which I’ve heard attributed to several gedolim over the years: Question: Why is it that our children do not ask “Four Questions” on Sukkos? After all, things are far from ordinary – arguably even more so than on Pesach – when we sit down to our first Yom Tov meal outdoors in the sukkah.

Posted on: September 30th, 2009

On the anniversary of the tragic events that took place on September 11, 2001, we remembered the lives lost of friends, family and neighbors. We also renewed our resolve to rebuild, to bring to justice those responsible, and to challenge extremism wherever it exists.

Posted on: September 30th, 2009

The role of a public intellectual in a democracy is not one that is easily understood or described. In our contemporary media culture, where celebrity is measured solely by notoriety rather than the force of a person’s ideas, it is difficult to imagine how someone like Irving Kristol can be properly appreciated.

Posted on: September 30th, 2009

There he goes again. Jimmy Carter, former Jim Crow man, has accused millions of his fellow Americans of engaging in the type of racial politics that marked his political career for years, even up to the eve of the 1980 presidential election, which he has never apologized for or acknowledged.

Posted on: September 23rd, 2009

Richard Goldstone – the primary author of a one-sided United Nations attack on Israeli actions during the Gaza war – has now become a full-fledged member of the international bash-Israel chorus. His name will forever be linked in infamy with such distorters of history and truth as Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein and Jimmy Carter.

Posted on: September 23rd, 2009

The huge “9/12” protest in Washington was the latest expression of discontent over President Obama’s leftward policy thrust. The discord is evident from the Tea Party movement to the chaotic town halls on health care reform.

Posted on: September 23rd, 2009

In the fall of 1988, I began a new chapter in my life. It had been almost a year since I delivered my bar mitzvah speech in my family’s warm suburban synagogue and just a few months after I’d completed eighth grade at the Hebrew Academy of Cleveland – the Jewish day school I had attended since pre-kindergarten.

Posted on: September 23rd, 2009

The UN’s Goldstone Commission report on the Israeli army’s behavior in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead is a mockery of history.