InDepth

Memory is always at the heart of redemption. It is also indispensable to survival in a still-anarchic world politics.

Which super idealists in Judea and Samaria would be willing to trade places with the Jews living in one of Israel's mixed Jewish/Arab cities?

Last week I wrote about the Bilgoraj group that traveled to Poland last year and had a somewhat good experience.

Last week I wrote about the Bilgoraj group that traveled to Poland last year and had a somewhat good experience.

The religious Jewish dating scene is severely broken. In the secular world men and women date by meeting each other at co-ed schools institutions or at events like parties and weekend getaways.

Based on her interview with Sen. Joe Biden, we may assume that WFTV (Orlando) Anchor Barbara West: 1. Did not graduate from a school of communications, 2. Will never receive an award from the Society of Professional Journalists, 3. Is unlikely to be employed by The New York Times in the foreseeable future, and 4. Will soon be working with Joe the Plumber, installing bathroom fixtures.

It’s difficult to say which member of the mainstream media has shamed him- or herself most in terms of pure self-abasement at the feet of the idol Obama. We are, after all, talking about a cast of name-brand reporters, analysts and opinion columnists (are such distinctions even relevant anymore?) probably numbering in the hundreds.

Politics in America is a contact sport. Passions flare and the rhetoric can get heated and nasty. Political parties stoke these fires, playing on people’s fears as a key fund-raising tactic.

The impact of the country’s economic crisis is being felt far and wide, and most, if not all, of us are being forced to cut back on non-essential spending. Being frum, however, is expensive. New clothes for Yom Tov; a lulav and esrog; fish, chicken, and meat every Shabbos; yeshiva tuition -- the list goes on and on. What results is a never-ending series of expenses that seems overwhelming and inescapable.

Although the presidential election is still several days away, it is safe to say that Democratic candidate Barack Obama has secured the lion’s share of American Jewish votes.

The California Supreme Court’s ruling last spring striking down that state’s ban against same-sex marriage created a tremendous uproar throughout the country. Religious groups, including Orthodox Jewry, railed against this fundamental challenge to the historically accepted definition of marriage as the union between a man and a woman.

Not often does someone ask me to write his obituary. But that's precisely what Chazzan Frankel asked me, mostly in jest, as we exited a subway station together about a year ago. Last Shabbos he passed away from heart failure, four months shy of his 90th birthday.

After absorbing any enemy nuclear aggression, Israel would certainly respond with a nuclear retaliatory strike.

For the last few weeks, I have been writing about the efforts of survivors and second- generation Jews from Piotrkow in going back to their hometown to preserve/restore the remnants of the town's Jewish history.

For the last few weeks, I have been writing about the efforts of survivors and second- generation Jews from Piotrkow in going back to their hometown to preserve/restore the remnants of the town's Jewish history.

A grassroots, Israeli-based voter registration organization maintains that eligible American voters in the Jewish state could significantly impact the results of next Tuesday's race for the White House.

For days after the Al Smith Memorial Dinner, held in mid-October at the Waldorf Astoria, the media buzzed with clips of presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama delivering hilarious routines that put many professional comedians to shame.

No doubt inspired by the perverse Holocaust conference sponsored two years ago by Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, student members of the Islamist Basij militia published a book of cartoons mocking and minimizing the Shoah just in time for a festive distribution at a Tehran rally for Al-Quds Day. The annual hate-fest glorifies the Palestinian cause and is an opportunity for Iranians to wildly denounce Israel and America and bemoan the continuing presence of Jews in Jerusalem.

Why should Jewish parents homeschool their children? King Solomon said we must “train a youth according to his way.” In other words, we must teach a child according to how he or she learns best. Thus, the Torah’s basis for homeschooling.

When Ephraim Halevy has something to say, people listen. And Halevy, former chief of the Mossad, does not believe Israelis should be involved in American politics. The Obama camp, apparently, thinks otherwise.

I am a child of the ‘60s. I learned to play guitar to music from the Rabbis’ Sons, Shlomo Carlebach and Lennon and McCartney. When we had a kumsitz at our youth functions we would intersperse Simon and Garfunkel music with songs from the Six-Day War. In 1970 I accompanied Rabbi Carlebach when he played an impromptu concert at Zion Square in Jerusalem.

Last month, millions of Americans opened their Sunday newspapers and found amid the usual pile of coupons and advertising flyers something unusual: a free DVD of a documentary called “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War with the West.”

As we enter the final two weeks of the most interesting and unpredictable presidential campaign in memory, the best way to keep up with developments, polls, and issues is by making regular visits to some of the seemingly countless political blogs and websites.

To be sure, it's a subject on which I have written here before, but an additional and generally unrecognized observation now deserves important mention.

Many Americans may wonder how it is possible for Ehud Olmert to still be prime minister of Israel after having resigned on September 21.

Last week I wrote how important it is that the second generation of Holocaust survivors begin to take over the work of preserving the memory of Jewish life and culture in the many towns and cities that had been mostly destroyed during the Shoah.

As I had done every weekday morning for the past few years, I opened the door of my apartment on September 30 to pick up my copy of the New York Sun. Immediately, I spotted the headline above the fold announcing the paper’s demise. No surprise, of course. All of us who counted ourselves as the Sun’s friends knew this day was coming.

Why do liberal Jews have such a problem with Sarah Palin? One would think that the die-hard feminists in the Jewish community would trumpet the ascension of a woman to the second spot on a presidential ticket, much as they did over two decades ago when Geraldine Ferraro took center stage with Walter Mondale in a quixotic attempt to unseat Ronald Reagan.

A casualty of the Left’s hatred for President George W. Bush has been a destructive inability to separate fact from fiction in the ongoing history of the war in Iraq. The latest case, which, sadly, has dug its way into the head of the Democratic presidential nominee, is the allegation that American troops, when they liberated Baghdad in April 2003, were not welcome as liberators.

Here is the campaign speech I wish John McCain or Barack Obama would deliver: If I were a typical, hardworking wage earner uninvolved in the full-time practice of government and