The Waste Land: Israel And Iran After Nuclear War

Credo quia absurdum. "I believe because it is absurd." It is a term that I have used often here in my weekly column, but never more meaningfully than today. Now, years after the international community first blathered vainly about Iranian intentions, Tehran marches unhindered to full and final nuclear weapons status

Red Lines, Not Green Line

Next month marks the 43rd anniversary of the June 1967 Six-Day War, when the Jewish state went from the brink of extinction to breathtaking victory.

Obama Shows No Interest In Ending Palestinian Incitement

Recent polls show that Americans, American Jews and Israelis all disapprove of President Obama's policies toward Israel. One reason for the disapproval that emerges in these polls is that the Obama administration pressures and criticizes Israel, while giving Mahmoud Abbas's Palestinian Authority a free pass.

Moving To The Gush

After eight wonderful years living in Jerusalem, my wife and I recently picked up the keys to our new house in a community located within the Gush Etzion "settlement" bloc.

Handing The Executioner His Sword: An Open Letter to European Jews Who Condemn Israel

My Dear Brothers and Sisters: There is nothing more pitiful than a condemned man asking his executioner for the sword so that he may do his work for him.

Protests For Shalit’s Release Do More Harm Than Good

There are times when it becomes truly difficult to explain the obtuseness of Israelis. And, for a change, I do not mean leftist Israelis, who by and large are simply beyond cure.

Kafka In Washington: Deceptive Cartographies And Hidden Meanings

Many people prowl round Mount Sinai. Their speech is blurred, either they are garrulous or they shout or they are taciturn. But none of them comes straight down a broad, newly made, smooth road that does its own part in making one's strides long and swifter. Franz Kafka, Mount Sinai

Lindsay Revisionism

A new exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York, a new book and a new documentary (which aired in New York on May 6) comprise a joint project with the apparent aim of refurbishing the tarnished reputation of John Vliet Lindsay, who presided over the rapid (and at the time seemingly irreparable) decline of New York in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

‘The Occupation Made Me Beat My Wife’: Distorting Scholarship to Libel Israel

Jews have been accused of harming and murdering of non-Jews since the 12th century in England, when the Jewish convert to Catholicism Theobald of Cambridge proclaimed that European Jews ritually slaughtered Christian children each year and drank their blood during Passover season.

‘The Outlook For Israel Is Very Grave’: An Interview with AFSI’s Rael Jean Isaac

Rael Jean Isaac was in the right place at the right time. Forty years ago, she found herself in Israel together with her husband, studying the various activist groups that had sprung up in Israel in the wake of the Six-Day War. Some argued for returning the lands won during the war; others, for keeping them. While researching the different movements for her doctoral thesis, she and her husband met veteran right-wing activist Shmuel Katz. The rest is history.

From Russia With – Unconditional – Love

I would like to be dan lekaf zechut – give the benefit of the doubt – to the Tennessee woman who, wishing to “return” her seven-year-old adopted son to the country of his birth, put the boy on a plane by himself and sent him back to Russia.

How I Learned Not To Judge A Judge By His Cover

I went to a sentencing several weeks ago - my first ever. The man being sentenced, William Hill, was convicted by a jury of brutally beating Jacob Gerstle, an 81-year-old member of my community in Washington Heights, in 2006.

Israel’s Defenders Must Keep Pushing Back

After months of uncharacteristic silence, New York's senior senator, Charles Schumer, finally voiced his concerns - and it could not have come at a more crucial time for American-Israeli relations.

Jihadist End of the World Imaginings: Prologue To Nuclear War In The Middle East?...

After absorbing any enemy nuclear aggression, Israel would certainly respond with a nuclear retaliatory strike. Although nothing is publicly known about Israel's precise targeting doctrine, such a reprisal would likely be launched against the aggressor's capital city and/or against similarly high-value urban targets. There would be absolutely no assurances, in response to this sort of aggression, that Israel would limit itself to striking back against exclusively military targets.

An Eye-Opening Tea Party Rally

I attended my first tea party on tax day, April 15, outside the steps of the James A. Farley Post Office in Manhattan. There I was, on 8th Avenue and 31st Street, smack dab between the uber-liberal West Side to the north of me and Greenwich Village to the south. And I was surrounded by signs that read, "Free markets, not free loaders", "Redistribute my work ethic, not my savings," and "Government does not solve problems, it subsidizes them."

Where Have All Our Middos Gone?

Shame wells up in me as I thread my way through the cluster of young wives standing near my home, animatedly talking with one another as their children play at their feet. Four shopping bags dangle from one arm, five from another, and I shift them uncomfortably as I carry them from my car, practically bent over from their weight.

Dayenu III

Had Judge Richard Goldstone only issued a distorted litany of accusations against the Jewish state - dayenu. Had the British government only issued an arrest warrant against Kadima leader and former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni - dayenu.

Palestinian Hate, U.S. Silence

There they go again. Palestinian Media Watch reports that the official Palestinian Authority newspaper, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, announced Prime Minister Salam Fayyad's plan for an upcoming fencing tournament for youth named after terror chieftain Abu Jihad.

Sefirah And The Pull Of Torah

We are seeing the "world coalition" forming and we can well imagine what the next steps will be. Perhaps the only comfort in this difficult world is that all the events we are witnessing have been predicted by our prophets. What else gives one the strength to endure what would otherwise be unendurable?

The Way To Challenge Obama’s Mideast Policy

Elie Wiesel and Ronald Lauder recently criticized the Obama administration in separately placed newspaper advertisements. Instead of listening to Wiesel and Lauder's concerns, Haaretz reported, administration officials expressed "harsh criticism" over their ads.

Jihadist End Of The World Imaginings: Prologue To Nuclear War In The Middle East?...

There is a widely unrecognized but still-meaningful irony in the continuing saga of Iranian nuclearization.From the standpoint of President Ahmadinejad and his clerical masters in Tehran, any prospect of hastening the Shiite apocalypse should naturally be welcomed. In the United States and Israel, on the other hand, any conscious encouragement of a Final Battle between "Good" and"Evil"must always be strenuously rejected.

The Real Deal

The anticipated or imminent arrival to the major leagues of a Jewish ballplayer is such a relatively infrequent phenomenon that it usually has Jewish fans buzzing - often for the two or three (or more) years it takes for a particular Jewish player to work his way up through the minor leagues.

Martyrs and Memory

Thirty years ago - Friday evening, May 2, 1980 - in Hebron. Inside Me'arat HaMachpelah, the massive 2,000-year-old Herodian edifice above the tombs of the biblical patriarchs and matriarchs of the Jewish people, the Shabbat service had just concluded.

‘I’m A Chazzan, But I Don’t Put On A Broadway Show’: An Interview with...

Sherwood Goffin has had a storied career. The cantor of Lincoln Square Synagogue since 1965, Goffin started his musical career as a folk singer. From 1961-1995, Goffin sang on major stages worldwide, recorded six albums, and was known as the "Voice of Soviet Jewry," singing at all the major Soviet Jewry UN Solidarity Day rallies from 1964-1991.

The Death Of Academic Discourse

Of the many intellectual perversions currently taking root on college campuses, perhaps none is more contradictory to what should be one of higher education's core values than the suppression of free speech.

Congress Must Challenge Obama On Israel

The silence continues to be deafening with no Democrat in Congress to my knowledge crying out against President Obama for continuing to try to diminish America's closeness to Israel.

Jewish Leadership Needs To Step Forward Now

We've heard from many Israelis who feel demoralized and abandoned due to the lack of any strong and meaningful statements or vigorous public demonstrations sponsored by major Jewish organizations in support of Israel's position on Jerusalem.

Disabled Deserve Full Share In Jewish Life

In February, Yachad/the National Jewish Council for Disabilities, an agency of the Orthodox Union, presented NAIM -- North American Inclusion Month - as a national initiative to develop sensitivity and knowledge of what it means to live with disabilities and to educate communities on how they can do their part to make sure all Jews are properly included in all aspects of Jewish life.

No Place Like Home

Last month, I took a quick, five-day trip to the Unites States to visit my grandfather at the Miami Jewish Home and Hospital, an assisted living facility in North Miami Beach where he is (hopefully) recovering from several strokes. While I was pleasantly surprised by the generosity shown to my grandfather by complete strangers (staff members and volunteers) and the extreme emotions exhibited by our family's usually unflappable patriarch, I was simply stunned by my own feelings toward the "Old Country."

All Hands On Deck

The American Jewish Committee's annual survey of Jewish public opinion has been released and the numbers do not lie. Down from the stratospheric 78 percent of Jews who voted for him in 2008, President Obama currently enjoys a 57 percent approval rating in the larger Jewish community.

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