Clinging To Illusions For Dear Life

Let me state what is painfully obvious. Despite our most hopeful illusions, people are not really good, nor do they really practice peace. While power corrupts, absolute powerlessness corrupts absolutely, and there is no safe place, neither high nor low, for the most vulnerable of our citizens.

‘Selling’ Israel – Right Down The Drain

It seems everyone is in a mighty tizzy about young Jews who fail to identify with Israel and don’t much care to visit there. How do we inspire these young folks to develop some feelings for the Holy Land, and attract them to visit Israel?

On IDF Refusals To Follow Orders: The Interlocking Perspectives Of National Law, International Law...

In Claude Lanzmann's monumental documentary, SHOAH, one of the surviving leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising remarks: "If you could lick my heart, it would poison you." Sadly, the time may still come - if Prime Minister Olmert is permitted to continue following Washington's cartography - that surviving Israelis will someday express similar sentiments.

Dealing With A Hostile Entity In Gaza

The Olmert government's September 29 decision to define the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip as a "hostile entity" was greeted with quite a few raised eyebrows.

From Quaker to Shaker to Orthodox Jew

Throughout history there have been gentiles who decided the only way for them to come close to God was to convert to Judaism.

Etrogim And A Revival Of Jewish Spirit

“And you shall rejoice in your festival” says the pasuk at the end of Parshas Re’ei (16:14), and this is actually a mitzvah. I suspect this is not intended to be one of the more difficult mitzvot for us to fulfill, yet for many hard-working Jews the Yomim Tovim are far greater sources of stress than joy.

Prayer For The New Year

In my former life as a school psychologist, I spent a great deal of time doing intelligence testing. Occasionally, I had the agonizing task of breaking the dreadful news to parents that a child was severely developmentally disabled. Whether or not I packaged the term in soft euphemisms like “cognitively depressed” or “mentally deficient,” most parents eventually caught on that I was just searching for other words to mollify that unbearable label.

The Spell Of Montezuma

Historians are both amazed and dumbfounded at the incredible saga of the Aztec nation. How was it possible, they ask, for Cortez and a relatively small number of Spanish soldiers to bring the mighty Aztec alliance to its knees?

My Encounter With Walt/Mearsheimer

Covering Israel, its relationship with the United States and the influential lobby that straddles the two often requires the basic skills and instincts of a cub reporter on the neighborhood beat.

Our Chelm-like Leadership And The Crisis In Jewish Education

In Yiddish folklore, the real-life Polish town of Chelm was characterized as a legendary community of fools. According to this folkloric tradition, Chelm’s residents were exceedingly proud of their tradition of non-wisdom and convoluted insight into the world’s problems. They viewed themselves as brilliant.

Web Choices 2007/Revised Edition

It’s been several months since the Monitor’s last listing of worthwhile websites and blogs, so here’s an updated version. Some of the sites that appeared on previous lists have been removed (either they went defunct, lapsed into relative inactivity, or simply failed to hold the Monitor’s interest) and a number of new ones have been added.

On IDF Refusals To Follow Orders: The Interlocking Perspectives Of National Law, International Law...

Can the current government of Israel protect its citizens? Clearly, Israelis have already experienced the Oslo and Road Map "peace process," as a Terror Process. If Judea/Samaria are soon transformed into "Palestine," the peace process will once again become a war and terror process.

Too Close To Home

Let me begin by wishing all of my readers a very happy and healthy new year. This past year was filled with many wonderful joys and several sorrows, but we thank Hashem for another year of life.

Po-Lin

Before Rosh Hashanah - Yom Kippur, it is customary to pray at the graves of one's parents.

The Left’s Nervous Breakdown

President Bush, writes Graydon Carter, paranoiac editor of Vanity Fair, the magazine that strives mightily to be taken seriously while championing celebrity narcissism and mindless titillation (“Nicole Kidman Bares All,” trills the cover of the current issue, thick as always with ads for perfume, lingerie and high-priced clothes and toys for high-income yuppies and those who aspire to be), “has taken away our civil liberties.”

Heavenly Grace: Seizing the Moment

The instant the Lelover Tzaddik reentered the bais hamedrash, the Chozeh of Lublin seized the moment to launch into a fervent recitation of Lamnatzayach.

A Hidden Revelation

Jewish tradition teaches that the city of Tzfat (Safed), located in the north of Israel in the beautiful Galilee region, is one of Israel’s four holy cities (the others are Jerusalem, Tiberias, and Hebron). Yet it is Tzfat that is praised for its exceptional spiritual presence.

Get Out Your Crystal Ball: The 5768 Jewish Pundit Quiz On Next Year’s News

Did you enjoy 5767? For Jews around the world, it was the usual assortment of bad – and even worse – news. Of course, not everything was awful. It was a year of recovery in Israel, as the aftermath of last year’s less than successful Second Lebanon War was followed by recriminations and political stalemate.

Israel Must Not Be The Guinea Pig In A Peace Experiment

It wasn’t easy for me to come out with a public call to Israelis to oppose the evacuation of Jews from Hebron with passive, non-violent resistance. Hebron is Jerusalem, not Yamit.

Do Israel’s Critics Have Anything Original To Say?

The Passover Seder liturgy tells us that in every generation an enemy arises seeking to eradicate the Jewish people. In the last hundred years, those enemies included the Russian czar, Stalin, Hitler, Gamal Abdel Nasser and, more recently, Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Osama: The Pitch

Well, we just marked the anniversary of the 9/11 atrocities and who pops out of his Caliphite Cave? Yup, Osama bin Laden.

On IDF Refusals To Follow Orders: The Interlocking Perspectives Of National Law, International Law...

Here we go again. The more things change, the more they remain the same. Now it is Hebron, where a number of soldiers have correctly refused intrinsically wrongful orders to evict fellow Jews from their homes. Now it is Homesh, where authentic Jews labor industriously and heroically to remedy earlier IDF evictions.

A Year In Poland

For many, Polish Jewry is a misnomer; they (even those that come to visit) think that there is no longer any Jewish life, that it was all killed in the Holocaust. In the past year, I have been privileged to see just how much life there is in Poland.

Picking Up The Pieces In New Orleans

Usually when disasters strike, there is no time to ask questions. With a rational approach, we spring into action and move forward with helping those in distress and repairing the damage. As mere mortals, we cannot understand why some hurricanes strike land while others veer away. Facing the uncertainty of climate change and random storms is part of the human condition, and so is picking up the pieces afterward.

Golden Ticket To Oblivion

On its face, it is the quintessential story of the success of American Jewish life: a public school where the teaching of Hebrew will be at the center of its core curriculum. But behind this facade, the founding of the Ben Gamla School in Broward County, Florida, has generated controversy and criticism.

For Tehila

Tehila Elbogen died in March, shortly after her sixteenth birthday and after a two-and-a-half year struggle against a rare and as yet incurable cancer. She lost the physical battle, winning the one that was spiritual and leaving a legacy that all of us who knew and admired her shall cherish until the end of our days.

Israel’s Bond With The Jewish People

This Rosh Hashanah, Israel stands on the threshold of its 60th anniversary. Still we are fighting for survival, and, despite the passage of time, face the threats of war and terror. Yet Israel stands strong. And the collective support of the Jewish people makes us even stronger.

Separating Rudy From 9/11

In a virtuoso display of the pettiness that has come to define the New York Times editorial page under Andrew Rosenthal, the Sour Gray Lady sniped last weekend against the active participation of Rudy Giuliani in the city’s memorial event marking the sixth anniversary of 9/11.

Language, Ecstasy And Immortality: The Always Deeper Meanings Of Suicide-Bombing Terrorism

Terrorism is not always what it seems. When it involves suicide bombing in Iraq or Israel, it often has little if anything to do with war or politics. Rather, its truest meanings are rooted in distinctly private expressions of fear, dissatisfaction, cowardice and loathing.

Day Of Remembrance In Lodz

A Day of Remembrance for the Jews of the Lodz Ghetto was recently held in the city.

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