InDepth

Wednesday, March 11, 2009 As our plane lands in Caracas I think about why we've come. Our objective is to express solidarity; to learn facts on the ground; and to speak with community leaders, rabbis, and clergy of other faiths with the goal of helping to map out future policy.

Making aliyah in 2000 afforded our family an opportunity to become part of the continuity of the Jewish people in the Jewish Land. In addition, we have been blessed to live in a community that has both the brightest Jewish minds of our times and some of the most courageous Jews of our generation.

We have made the blessing on the sun. We have left Egypt. We have crossed the Red Sea. Now what?

Pierre Rehov, a nom de guerre, is indeed a resistance fighter; he resists the Islamist propaganda wars against Israel, the Jews, and the West by making films that document the truth.

Hamas, go ahead and bomb Sderot! With might and blood, we’ll redeem you, O Palestine! The words above were recently chanted by hundreds of pro-Palestinian supporters outside a university as they waved Palestinian flags and pictures of suicide bombers in response to a defensive Israeli military operation.

There is something perverse and masochistic about a self-described “pro-Israel” group going out of its way to lend support to the airing of luridly anti-Semitic propaganda. But that’s what happened last month when J Street – the “pro-Israel, pro-Peace” lobby – endorsed the performance of “Seven Jewish Children,” an outrageous, 10-minute screed written by British playwright Caryl Churchill, originally performed in London and now being produced in cities across the United States.

Every year, Pesach is one of the most celebrated holidays throughout the world - and Pesach in Poland is no exception. This year there were numerous private and public sederim around the country.

Until now, the strategic issue of Israel's nuclear ambiguity - the so-called "bomb in the basement" - has been kept squarely on the back burner. Today, however, time is quickly running out for the Jewish State, and Israel's new/old prime minister absolutely must reconsider this burning issue. From the standpoint of urgency, of course, the immediate problem is Iran.

One of the strangest and, at first blush, inexplicable aspects of the current social and political scene, remarked upon by many writers, is the “unholy alliance” that has been forged between the proponents of Western secularism and the armies of Islam ranged against it.

A few years ago I began an initiative at the Israeli Foreign Ministry aimed at opening a dialogue with Muslim communities in the West. When the first delegations of European and American Muslims started to arrive, they were amazed at the coexistence between Arabs and Jews in Israel.

Last year I spent part of Pesach in the oddest of places. I had been in the office of Kesher Israel Congregation of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania late one afternoon before Pesach when the phone rang. It was a chaplain (not Jewish) from Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary. They had just received some new Jewish prisoners and were scrambling to meet their Pesach needs.

For a country that has fought for thirty years over the question of a woman's right to choose, we seem to all agree that once a child is born parents have no choice. They are not allowed to send their children to the school they prefer without incurring backbreaking financial penalties.

In the aftermath of the forcible evacuation of thousands of Jewish settlers from Gush Katif in 2005, legal protection for settlers and right-wing activists in Israel was virtually non-existent. Meanwhile, legal organizations dedicated to the defense of basic rights for Arabs and left-wing Jews were thriving.

Once upon a time, somewhere in the steppes of Eastern Europe, in the Pale that contained many a Jewish village, there roamed two beggars. One of the hobos was a Jew, the other a gentile.

In the wake of another upsurge in activity and publicity surrounding Gilad Shalit, it bears remembering that there are compelling reasons for the Israeli government to think twice before agreeing to release hundreds of terrorists for his safe and overdue return.

The late Michael Kelly was a brilliant writer and editor (The New Republic, The Atlantic) who coincidentally happened to be an American patriot and a strong supporter of Israel – a combination not commonly found in the circles in which he traveled.

Pour out Thy wrath upon the nations that know Thee not and upon the kingdoms that call not upon Thy name; for they have consumed Jacob and laid waste his dwelling. Pour out Thy fury upon them, and may the kindling of Thine anger overtake them. Pursue them with anger and destroy them from under God’s skies.

One particular Passover for young Chaim Merimzon must have seemed like a dream. Merimzon was one of thousands of Jewish children – Cantonists – who were victims of Tsar Nicholas’s zealous obsession with forcing them to accept baptism.

Who can forget the Danish cartoon controversy ignited by an image of a wild-eyed Muhammad with a lighted dynamite stick protruding from his turban? Even those who decried the global overreaction – cynically exploited by Mideast demagogues whose stock-and-trade is defaming Christians and Jews – understood why decent Muslims of all stripes were offended.

An identifying mark of the Jew has been, and for many still is, his beard. The foundation for this is the commandment in the Torah: “You shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shall you mar the corners of your beard” (Leviticus 19:27).

Passover is a festival of freedom, chag hageulah, when we remember our deliverance from slavery in Egypt. For my father, Chaskel Tydor, Passover was also a reminder of the slavery he experienced during his lifetime – of his five and a half years in the Nazi camps of Buchenwald and Auschwitz.

Credo quia absurdum. "I believe because it is absurd." How, then, shall we Jews survive in such a distorted and meshugana world, both as individuals, and as the always-fragile Jewish State? In our collective form, shall we truly "Seek peace, and pursue it," when our enemies' brand of "sanity" lies relentlessly in genocide and war? Or should we just reluctantly resign ourselves to ceaseless conflict as the unavoidable expression of sanity in an undeniably insane world?

An Interview With Radio Talker Steve Malzberg

The humble-natured sheep symbolic of Nissan (Aries), the first month of the year, recognizes the shepherd to be its guide, just as the Jewish people place their faith in their Shepherd, the Creator of the universe.

It would be fair to say that the recent demonstrations in cities around the world during which Israel was likened to Nazi Germany, and Israeli soldiers to Nazi storm troopers, created a fair amount of angst among an appreciable number of Jews. But as this is hardly a new phenomenon, the surprise really lies in why so many Jews continue to be surprised.

“People need money in their pockets to spend. That’ll get our economy going again.” -- David Axelrod, senior adviser to President Obama Drastic situations require drastic measures. Thus, to reach Axelrod’s necessary goal, we need to end Social Security as we know it.

Although he was gravely ill for years and could no longer fulfill his leadership responsibilities, Rabbi Elya Svei, zt”l, continued to influence many of us who are involved in Torah education, whether as principals or teachers or lay leaders.

During a recent visit to several university campuses in the U.S., I discovered that there is more sympathy for Hamas there than there is in Ramallah. Listening to some students and professors on these campuses, for a moment I thought I was sitting opposite a Hamas spokesman or a would-be-suicide bomber.

A recent poll from CBS News found that the tightening economy is forcing people to make some tough choices. Alarmingly, these kinds of decisions are spilling over into an area where they don't belong -- health care. More than one in three Americans is delaying care. Around 30 percent are skipping screenings, tests, and other treatments. And 27 percent aren't filling their prescriptions.

He's not Jewish, he's not Lithuanian and he's not a librarian but Wyman Brent, an American from San Diego, is building a Jewish library in Vilna.