Op-Eds

I am still severely shocked in the aftermath of the heinous massacre that took place in Mumbai last week. Despicable Muslim terrorists carried out a well-planned, deadly assault on civilian targets, killing hundreds of innocent people.

All terrorism is monstrous, but the murder in India of Rabbi Gavriel and Rivkah Holtzberg stands out for its unspeakable infamy.

I cannot recall in my lifetime a man elevated to the presidency who was abandoned by his father as a small child.

It is hard to imagine a scene as joyous and religiously charged as Machpela on the Friday night of Parshat Chayei Sarah. Every year, many thousands of Jews from all over Israel, and hundreds more from Europe and America, flock to the tomb of our patriarchs, which Abraham purchased for Sarah’s burial nearly 4,000 years ago.

Barack Obama spent his first week after being elected president planning the next four years. And even though the Oval Office is occupied by someone else until January, the pundits were already predicting the next administration’s trouble spots.

At first glance, it’s not surprising that I voted for Barack Obama for president this election. I’m a New Yorker and a Jew, and so any pollster would have predicted my choice.

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus believed that reality is ever in flux. “You cannot step into the same river twice,” he taught, emphasizing that the only constant is change.

Liberal Jews have invented the myth that Judaism is a synonym for the pursuit of "social justice."

The assassination of the third secretary of the German Embassy in Paris, Ernst Vom Rath, by 17-year-old Herschel Grynszpan in early November 1938 was unquestionably a crime. Under normal circumstances, young Herschel would have been arraigned in a court of law.

Well, it's finally over – and about time, too. After two years of seemingly endless campaigning and eight of partisan bickering and recriminations, the country appears to have turned a historic corner.

Over the next few years, the Jewish community will face serious challenges. Throughout this presidential election, we always understood that whoever was elected president would shape how our country deals with these challenges.

November 4, 11 p.m., Times Square - Taxis horns are honking, young people are jumping. Barack Obama has just been declared president-elect of the United States.

Has there ever been a lamer duck than George W. Bush? How he went from winning a clear majority of the 2004 popular vote to his current dismal showing is a topic that will fascinate future historians.

An increasing number of Jews, including Israeli Jews, say Israel has no real leaders and that few Diaspora Jewish organizational heads will sacrifice their cushy positions for Israel – a country beloved by God but rendered repulsive by more than 40 years of lethal Saudi- and Soros-funded propaganda and by the internal corruptions that plague all nations but are particularly dangerous to Jews when they behave this way in a Jewish state.

The religious Jewish dating scene is severely broken. In the secular world men and women date by meeting each other at co-ed schools institutions or at events like parties and weekend getaways.

Politics in America is a contact sport. Passions flare and the rhetoric can get heated and nasty. Political parties stoke these fires, playing on people’s fears as a key fund-raising tactic.

The impact of the country’s economic crisis is being felt far and wide, and most, if not all, of us are being forced to cut back on non-essential spending. Being frum, however, is expensive. New clothes for Yom Tov; a lulav and esrog; fish, chicken, and meat every Shabbos; yeshiva tuition -- the list goes on and on. What results is a never-ending series of expenses that seems overwhelming and inescapable.

Although the presidential election is still several days away, it is safe to say that Democratic candidate Barack Obama has secured the lion’s share of American Jewish votes.

The California Supreme Court’s ruling last spring striking down that state’s ban against same-sex marriage created a tremendous uproar throughout the country. Religious groups, including Orthodox Jewry, railed against this fundamental challenge to the historically accepted definition of marriage as the union between a man and a woman.

No doubt inspired by the perverse Holocaust conference sponsored two years ago by Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, student members of the Islamist Basij militia published a book of cartoons mocking and minimizing the Shoah just in time for a festive distribution at a Tehran rally for Al-Quds Day. The annual hate-fest glorifies the Palestinian cause and is an opportunity for Iranians to wildly denounce Israel and America and bemoan the continuing presence of Jews in Jerusalem.