InDepth

Though the ranks of single-issue pro-Israel Jewish voters (they comprise perhaps one-fourth of the Jewish electorate) have contracted as a result of mounting assimilation, those voters have nonetheless learned a lot over the past sixteen years.

Most Christians, including many (if not a majority of) members of the mainline Protestant denominations, support Israel. Nevertheless, the Christian Left persists with its sometimes vehemently anti-Israeli and unabashedly pro-Palestinian sentiments. Why?

“How long can a country survive if its intellectuals are working to undermine the very culture the country was built on?” That was the question asked by Yoram Hazony, founder of the Jerusalem-based Shalem Center, a think tank dedicated to countering the influence of Israel’s “new historians” and post-Zionist academics, in his book The Jewish State (Basic Books, 2000), the first thorough – and critical – examination of post-Zionism available in English and still a must-read for anyone interested in Israeli history and politics.

Leaders with the Oslo mentality who have led Israel until now really do not have solutions to Israel's problems.

Over the years, regular readers of my column in The Jewish Press may have noticed a continuing regard for the concept of time.

On March 13 representatives of The Museum Of The History Of Polish Jews addressed the Helsinki Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe regarding the importance and aims of its institution.

Israel has a dual justice system. While operating within a single overall structure of courts and related legal institutions, two separate justice systems exist in the country: one for leftists and the other for everyone else.

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Catholic Church did its utmost to root out any vestige of Jewish religious observance among New Christians.

Our family has arisen from sitting shiva for Horav Chaim Eliyahu ben Horav Avrohom Yaakov zt”l. There was an uninterrupted flow of friends, neighbors, former and current students, and distinguished rabbis and community leaders who came to console us from 7:30 a.m. until close to midnight.

Sderot. Where innocent Jews live under the constant threat of rockets. Where parents make bedrooms out of bomb shelters for their children so they won’t have to lift them up and out of bed each time. Where kids won’t play more than ten feet from their apartment for fear of a tzeva adom, a red alert. Where people – children and adults – are constantly on the lookout for shelter, whether walking to shul or going from the car to the grocery store.

I am dumbfounded that there has been no drop in Barack Obama’s standing in the polls following revelations that he sat in Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s church for 20 years and did nothing, publicly or privately, to voice disagreement with Wright’s hate speech.

As our community has grown stronger and more self-confident and amassed numerous impressive achievements, we have embraced ever-more restrictive approaches that were not part of our mindset a generation ago when we were far weaker but were led by Torah giants of transcendent stature.

For a generation after World War II, particularly given revelations of the Holocaust, most American Protestant denominations embraced a more tolerant attitude toward Jews. Since the 1980’s, however, there has been a marked shift, evident in the anti-Israel positions adopted by more liberal denominations like the United Methodist Church (UMC); the Evangelical Presbyterian Church in America (ELCA); the Episcopal Church in the United States of America (ECUSA); and the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. (PCUSA).

As an evangelical Christian, Cal Thomas – author, syndicated columnist, television talking head – brings to his work a deep religious commitment combined with a sophisticated media sensibility. His worldview is governed by biblical absolutes, among them the unshakable conviction that the Jews have a divine right to the Land of Israel.

Rabbi Yitzchak Dadon is a Jew who has not been confused by misplaced love theories.

Pain can sometimes be sanitized by language, but it can never be truly anesthetized.

Purim is major event throughout Poland. Many marginal Jews bring their whole families to the synagogue for the festive reading of the Megillah.

In June 1982, in the pages of Ms. magazine, Letty Cottin Pogrebin earned her reputation as a Jewish feminist by writing about anti-Semitism among feminists. She did so by standing on the shoulders of other Jewish feminists who had been wrestling with this “problem without a name” since the early 1970’s and whose cries Pogrebin finally heard.

There is an allegorical story about a luxury passenger ship crossing the Atlantic Ocean that hits an iceberg and begins to sink. On the lower decks, the crew and passengers make a valiant but unsuccessful effort to plug the hole in the ship’s hull. On the upper deck, first-class passengers rearrange the deck chairs, sun themselves and play shuffleboard, seemingly oblivious to the disaster around them. Meanwhile, the ship’s band plays on.

In Ben Hecht’s autobiography, A Child of the Century, Hecht writes of a call he received from Rabbi Stephen Wise, the reigning Jewish-American leader of the day, who ordered Hecht to quit his activities on behalf of the Jews.

Have you ever wondered why the incidence of iggun, women or men unable to remarry due to the refusal of a spouse to give or receive a get (Jewish divorce document) is dramatically lower in some Orthodox communities than in others?

The world now knows that for nearly 20 years, Senator Barack Obama has attended Chicago’s Trinity United Church and that his pastor was Rev. Jeremiah Wright. In his March 18 speech on race, Obama criticized some of Wright’s statements but also essentially excused and rationalized his sermons on the basis that many African-Americans growing up in past decades experienced prejudice, discrimination, lack of economic opportunity, etc.

The irony doesn’t get any better than this. Barack Obama is supported by multitudes of Americans so eager to demonstrate their “liberal” benevolence that they gave him their votes on faith, before they had any substantial knowledge of who the man really is. Enter into the picture the images of Obama’s beloved minister of 20 years, Jeremiah Wright, spewing his hateful venom to his delirious mass of followers.

Was there ever any doubt that liberal journalists and media outlets would swoon over whatever Barack Obama would say in response to the controversy concerning his relationship with his longtime pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright? Liberals just have too much invested in the storyline of a post-racial, biracial healer whose mission it is to set our house in order after the unspeakable depredations of the George W. Bush years.

Since the founding of the state, the goal of Israel's leaders has been to make Israel a normal state like all other states.