Op-Eds

The heinous and cruel murders in Mumbai were merely the latest in a long line of such crimes against Jews perpetrated by Islamo-Nazis and abetted by their leftist supporters on the pretext of opposition to Israel – as if that were a legitimate reason to commit war crimes and racist mass murder.

As the story goes, a young reporter came to interview Thomas Edison about his attempts to invent the light bulb and asked him, “Mr. Edison, why do you persevere with this endeavor, after failing seven hundred times to make it work?”

The core of the Arab-Israeli problem is Israel’s “territorial addiction.” So declares a December 3 Haaretz article by one Alex Sinclair. As to the solution, Sinclair does not quite echo Haaretz’s former executive editor David Landau, who urged Condoleezza Rice a year ago to “rape” Israel. Rather, he advocates a friendly but forceful stand by President-elect Obama to break Israel of its addiction – promoting, in the jargon of addiction treatment (although Sinclair doesn’t use the term), less violent-sounding “tough love” instead of rape.

I can remember sitting next to my father in shul, an antsy child waiting none-too-patiently for the announcements that would herald the end of the service. I knew they would come, I just didn’t know if they would include it – the holy grail of shul attendance

It was the 26th annual dinner for Bet El and the main ballroom was crowded with dignitaries, honorees, politicians, cantors, musicians, and a vast number of supporters. My dear friends Rickie and Dr. Morris Platt were the gracious hosts at our table. On the dais sat the beating heart of Bet El, Yaakov Katz – “Katzele” – tall, vivacious and white bearded.

Five years ago at this time, something remarkable happened, which has been conveniently forgotten: On December 13, 2003, one of history’s worst dictators, Saddam Hussein, was captured by U.S. troops.

It’s all too common nowadays for people to defend the widespread method of shidduchim by pointing to the biblical story of Eliezer finding a wife for Yitzchak. Apparently the Torah mandates this method as proper, and therefore there is little else to discuss beyond perhaps fine-tuning the way singles are set up by shadchanim and further shielding them from outside influences and one another.

We live in an age of miracles and wonder. Does that sound like a ridiculous statement – to characterize the age of the Internet, gene therapy and biological science as an age of miracles? For many people, it does sound ridiculous. To their ears, I might as well be a visitor from medieval times, here to turn science on its head and usher in a decidedly less enlightened worldview.

President Bush and First Lady Laura Bush watched Monday night as the grandsons of Harry Truman and David Ben-Gurion lit a menorah on the State Floor of the White House.

I lived in Mumbai for six months last year and would go to the Beit Chabad with friends for a Shabbat meal about every second week. Over the course of six months we got to know the rabbi and his wife quite well.

Eliezer, Avraham’s servant, was a great man. Head of his master’s household, he was entrusted to find a wife for our father Yitzchak. He was the man who asked God for guidance and his prayer was immediately answered as Rivkah appeared and offered water to him and to his camels. He was treated like a potentate in the house of Besuel. And yet, the Torah repeatedly refers to him as a “slave.”

Islamo-Nazis came to Mumbai, and besides attacking major hotels, centers of commerce, and tourist attractions, they went Jew-hunting.

The Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival recently rejected Robin Garbose’s masterful “A Light for Greytowers” – the first feature-length musical film marketed “by women, for women” in accordance with halacha (Jewish law) – on the basis of gender discrimination.

Natan Sharansky is a modern-day Jewish hero, no doubt about that. Every Jew should know of his imprisonment by the Soviet Union for his human rights and Zionist activism. Years ago my father gave me a copy of Sharansky’s autobiography, Fear No Evil, to use for a sixth-grade book report.

American Jewry – certainly when compared to earlier generations – has become indifferent to the fate of Israel as well as its own. No doubt, poor and uninspiring leadership in both Israel and the United States is a major contributing factor, but it goes further.

It doesn’t take very much to lose a neshamah. The young woman was witty, charming, frum, and a Harvard Law School graduate. She was also black, and lived in an Orthodox neighborhood. One Purim, she was treated in a neighborhood shul to the sight of a young mother with a few children in tow. As her Purim get-up, the mother had chosen to adorn herself and her kids with blackface and thick lips. The connection to Purim was not clear.

Ehud Olmert, facing criminal prosecution for corruption, is using his final days in office to subvert Israeli security and impose his own policy notions on the country - notions rejected by the overwhelming majority of Israeli citizens.

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.