60 Years Later, Arab Goal Remains The Same

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.”

History Will Render Bush’s True Approval Rating

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.

The Jews Who Fired The First Shots Against Fascist Tyranny

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.

Time To Retire A Derogatory Term

Posted on: May 14th, 2008

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

History’s Slow Pace And The Rebirth Of Israel

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.

Martin Luther King Would Be Repulsed By Black Anti-Semitism

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.

Why Liberalism Lost Me

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.

How It Felt When Israel Was Born

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.

How ‘Nakba’ Proves There’s No Palestinian Nation

Posted on: April 30th, 2008

Over the past few years, the term nakba (also spelled naqba) has become the favorite nonsense word of the Anti-Israel Lobby.

Birthright Trips For Non-Jews

Posted on: April 30th, 2008

Israel is about to turn 60 and the silence, outside of the Jewish community, is deafening.

What’s Wrong With The World?

Posted on: April 23rd, 2008

I wrote in early 2001, “Now we are all Israelis.” The Intifada against Israel the world chose to ignore became a global Intifada against civilization. In 2002-2003, I wrote that anti-Zionism was the new anti-Semitism, that decades of increasingly lethal propaganda against Israel had finally turned the Jewish state into the Jew of the World.

Israel’s Behavior, Described In Jokes

Posted on: April 23rd, 2008

Israel’s behavior in recent decades reminds me of three anecdotes. The first concerns a businessman, a teacher and an engineer who were captured by enemy forces and condemned to death by hanging. Each was asked how he preferred to be hanged – head- or feet-up. The businessman replied that head-up was preferable. He was hanged accordingly, but the gibbet collapsed and he was freed. The teacher followed the businessman’s choice; the gibbet collapsed again and he was also saved.

The Story Of Our Generation

Posted on: April 23rd, 2008

We are in the month of Nissan, the month of Redemption. How we yearn for the geulah. As our Exile becomes more painful and our hearts ache with sorrow, grief and fear, many of us find ourselves crying out to our Father in Heaven:

A Halachic Response To The Holocaust

Posted on: April 23rd, 2008

It has been estimated that more than half of the millions of Jews caught up in the Holocaust observed the mitzvot, the commandments of the Torah, in their daily lives prior to the advent of the Nazis. Did this commitment to halacha, the “way” of Jewish religious law, crumble and disintegrate under the pressures of the Final Solution? Or did halacha continue to bring not only some semblance of order, but of meaning, sanity, and even sanctity, into their lives?

Passover: Getting the Message

Posted on: April 16th, 2008

In 1924, a rabbinical conference was held in the city of Grodno, then located in Poland. The sages had gathered to discuss matters pertaining to Russian and Polish Jewry and to establish a program of action for the Va’ad haYeshivot, the council of yeshivas.

The Story We Forget To Retell

Posted on: April 16th, 2008

Nearly 52 years ago, on October 5, 1956, a newly released movie billed itself as “the greatest event in motion picture history.”

Sandwiches: Symbol Or Meal?

Posted on: April 16th, 2008

A young construction worker lies in bed, the shrill shriek of his alarm still echoing in his room. He groans. He doesn’t want to get up to confront the day. He’s comfortable under the blankets, with the early morning sun streaming in through the crack in the drapes and landing across his face. Another few minutes … that’s all. When the alarm’s “snooze control” wakes him from his renewed slumber, he reluctantly pushes aside his blankets and begins his daily routine of shaving, showering, brushing his teeth.

I Survived Them All: A Personal Account of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

Posted on: April 16th, 2008

Warsaw Ghetto: a name, a phrase, familiar to most people today only as a matter of history. Important history, yes, but dry and impersonal just the same. Because even the most vivid of photographs and the most descriptive of texts, whether found on the pages of books or the walls of museums, cannot begin to describe the abject terror and suffering experienced by those who were there.

Unreasonable Accommodations

Posted on: April 9th, 2008

Conflicts between the religious needs of minorities and those of the rest of society always have the potential to take a reasoned debate off the tracks.

Obama’s Words Rarely Match His Actions

Posted on: April 9th, 2008

Democratic presidential frontrunner Senator Barack Obama wants the best of both political worlds, claiming to disagree with while refusing to sever ties to his pastor and (as Obama calls him) “uncle” – the unrepentant anti-U.S., anti-Israel, anti-white Rev. Jeremiah Wright.