InDepth

According to reports circulating in the media and on the Internet, the recent tragic passing of yet another young person in our community may have stemmed at least in part from the trauma of childhood abuse.

With the proliferation over the past several years of websites and blogs spotlighting anti-Israel media bias, it’s not surprising that some of the Monitor’s younger readers harbor the misimpression that the bias is only as old as the Internet age itself – that prior to, say, 1995 or 1996 Israel received favorable, or at least fair, press coverage.

It’s no secret these days that the Obama administration leans left. On every crucial issue, from dealing with al Qaeda and the threat of terrorism, to the environment, to health care, to the administration’s handling of our overseas adversaries, the president and his advisers have come down hard on the left side of the political divide.

Officials in the Obama administration have decided they will be cutting the guest list in half for this year’s White House Chanukah party.

On the 25th day of Kislev we will celebrate Chanukah. On the 4th day of Kislev Jonathan Pollard celebrated the start of his 25th year in prison.

After Palestine, conditions in the Middle East would be markedly less favorable to both Israel and the United States. The only credible way for Israel to deter large-scale conventional attacks following Palestinian statehood would be by maintaining visible and increasingly large-scale conventional capabilities. Naturally, enemy states contemplating first-strike attacks upon Israel using chemical and/or biological weapons would be apt to take more seriously Israel's nuclear deterrent. Whether or not this nuclear deterrent had remained undisclosed (the so-called "bomb in the basement") could also affect Israel's deterrent credibility and, thereby, U.S. security.

It was supposed to be temporary. Nine years ago last month, then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak ordered the Israeli army to withdraw from Joseph's Tomb in Shechem (Nablus) in one of the most humiliating retreats in the nation's modern history.

It was supposed to be temporary.Nine years ago last month, then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak ordered the Israeli army to withdraw from Joseph's Tomb in Shechem (Nablus) in one of the most humiliating retreats in the nation's modern history.

Editor's Note: On Nov. 26, 2008 - the Hebrew date was Cheshvan 29, which this year fell on Monday, Nov. 16 - Islamic terrorists went on a savage killing spree in Mumbai, India, murdering 179 people including Chabad emissaries Rabbi Gavriel and Rivkah Holtzberg. The following tribute to the Holtzbergs was written by Rabbi Holtzberg's sister.

Campus radicalism, support for totalitarianism, and general political extremism are not new on Western campuses. Indeed some of the worst political extremism in academic history took the form of enthusiastic support on American campuses for Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.

I am one lucky man – some might say blessed – as earlier this year I had a heart attack and survived, physically and financially.

Upon hearing the reading of the Torah describing the purchase of the Cave of Machpela by our forefather Abraham, we were reminded again of the basic significance and substance of the destiny of the Jewish people, namely that our nation and our land are bonded by strong spiritual cords that can never be severed.

Ever hear of Gershom Mendes Seixas? Well, he might just be the forgotten hero of Thanksgiving.

Not since John Podhoretz’s 1993 Hell of a Ride, a hilarious yet depressing account of working in the George H.W. Bush administration, has an insider political book satisfied as much as does Speech-less: Tales of a White House Survivor (Crown Publishers), Matt Latimer’s new, screamingly funny memoir of working as a congressional staffer and then as a speechwriter, first for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and later for President George W. Bush.

Professor Daniel Rynhold may teach modern Jewish philosophy, but his recently published book is titled, An Introduction to Medieval Jewish Philosophy.

However unwittingly, President Obama is now setting the stage for Israel's dismemberment. Almost certainly, his fixed and unwavering commitment to a Palestinian state stems from the purest and most sensible of motives. Surely this principled commitment is drawn from some deeply personal and historic sense of justice and fairness, and not from any sort of insidious anti-Israel bias. The problem, however, is that this seemingly well-intentioned presidential interest in fair play is starkly at odds with an asymmetrically brutal geopolitical reality in the Middle East.

Israel is, again, locked on the horns of a dilemma. Having been indicted by the "world community" (in the guise of the Goldstone report) for alleged war crimes in its conduct of last winter's Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, it faces unenviable and unacceptable choices.

An Interview with Jeff Daube, the ZOA's Man In Israel

In this week’s parshah our father Abraham leaves this world. His son Isaac is left to carry on his legacy. But who really is Yitzchok Avinu? Do you feel you know him? What is the meaning of his life?

A friend of mine likes to say the High Holiday season is for pulpit rabbis what the tax season is for accountants. Well, my “tax season” was a bit busier than usual this year. Just days before Rosh Hashanah, I was privileged to be part of the Orthodox Union’s Leadership Mission to Washington, which took place September 14-15.

In the fall of 1993, I had the wonderful experience of interviewing Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach. Both a controversial personality and a dynamic presence, Reb Shlomo never lost his unqualified love for his fellow Jew, though he was well aware the feeling was not always reciprocal.

Anger – no, fury – was my first reaction to news of the rampage at Fort Hood last week. Thirteen dead and thirty wounded is tragic enough. But how could the alleged murderer, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, have gone undetected on an American military base for so long?

Nazi hunting. Sounds like a glamorous job, but judging from Operation Last Chance, a new book by Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff, catching Nazis is more grit than glamour.

David Paterson is the fourth African American and only the second legally blind governor in U.S. history. The son of former New York Secretary of State Basil Paterson, he spent 20 years in New York's state senate before being chosen as Eliot Spitzer's running mate for the 2006 New York gubernatorial election. He became governor on March 17, 2008 after Spitzer resigned.

Klal Yisrael lost a premier mechanech this past erev Rosh Hashanahwith the sudden passing of Rabbi Pesach Oratz, z"l. Rabbi Oratz's career in Jewish education spanned close to six decades, over which time he taught tens of thousands of students. One of the things that made Rabbi Oratz unique was the range of topics and of students that he taught.

One of Steven Ari-Z Leiner's fondest childhood memories, he says while taking a break from campaigning, is when on his 13th birthday the late Bobover Rebbe helped him put on his tefillin. The Bobover Rebbe, Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, and Maimonides are some of his heroes. Some of his secular role models include John F. Kennedy, Mayor Bloomberg, Warren Buffet, and Paul Krugman, he adds.

Iran continues to play a cat and mouse game with the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and with the United States. Early in October, when another secret site for enriching uranium was discovered, Tehran "magnanimously" agreed to certain future international inspections. To be sure, the actual promise of any such inspections, which was quickly and naively praised by both IAEA head Dr. Mohamed El-Baradei and U.S. President Barack Obama, will be effectively meaningless.

With the history of twentieth-century science and technology largely a saga of Jewish accomplishment, in retrospect it might seem foreordained that after World War II the rising Jewish nation in the Middle East would emerge not only as a financial power but also as a scientific and technological leader.

The narrow streets were dark and filled with sounds. Figures moved behind blackened windows in the overbearing buildings. Finger on the trigger, senses focused on my surroundings, I ensured my fellow Jews the right to pray at the grave of one of our revered figures.

The espionage charges leveled against American scientist Stewart David Nozette raise more questions than they answer – and those questions should deeply trouble, if not outrage, the American Jewish community.