InDepth

"For 2000 years Jews would have gladly exchanged the horrors of exile for the current State of Israel.

Last week Irena Sendler, a true heroine, passed away.

I have long believed the world would be much better off if Hollywood airheads would stick to entertainment and never pretend to be intellectuals, spouting off with their "ideas" about politics, diplomacy, etc.

I find the Orthodox Jewish approach to problem-solving fascinating, in a dark sort of way. It consists of a series of steps that looks something like this:

If history has taught us anything, it's that Orthodox Jews are hardly impervious to the lures of outside influence.

Recent congressional hearings about the destruction, by Israel’s air force, of a Syrian-North Korean nuclear facility has shed light on the mutually beneficial nature of U.S.-Israel relations.

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.”

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.

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.

Having recently celebrated Israel Independence Day, I wonder why so many Jews refuse to pray for the State of Israel and for our Jewish sons and daughters who serve in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

Back in 1999 the Monitor, inspired by the political humorist P.J. O’Rourke, published an “Enemies List” of anti-Israel journalists. The column struck such a responsive chord, with readers nominating dozens of their own choices, that several follow-ups to the original list eventually appeared over the next couple of years.

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

"If you do not let my people go," says Moses to Pharaoh, "all of Egypt will be filled with frogs."

Lola survived the Nazi genocide and with Yehuda Bielski went to Palestine. In commemoration and celebration of Israel on the Jewish State's 60th birthday, the following is from her memoir, "ONE CAME BACK" -- edited recollections about an extraordinary time in Jewish history when extraordinary people worked to, as Yehuda put it, "build a Jewish country."

In college, he embarked on bodybuilding to the point where he became, in the words of one friend, a "solid slab of muscle" who "could not flex his arm without ripping his shirt."

Patience is something we sometimes have too little of, but when it comes to history it is often a trait we need in abundance.

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.

Thirty years ago, the journalist Sidney Zion wrote an article for New York magazine titled “The Palestine Problem: It’s All in A Name,” which he would update in 2003 for The Jewish Press. Zion essentially supported the right-wing Zionist argument against the historicity of the Kingdom of Jordan, while upending the right-wing Zionist argument against the historicity of a Palestinian people.

Nobody really expected Israel to react to the Katyusha rockets launched from southern Lebanon that hit the northern Israeli town of Shelomi (on the morning of Jan. 8, 2008).

Senator Barak Obama has displayed basic intelligence and understanding on many complex policy issues, and his "debate promises" in support of Israel were forthright and plausibly meaningful.