InDepth

Tenuous reports of renewed Israeli-Syrian peace negotiations have begun circulating. Before concrete proposals are put forward, however, certain conditions must precede serious talks.

Reading Rabbi Saul Berman’s moving front-page essay (“Martin Luther King and the Exodus Narrative”) in last week’s Jewish Press struck an emotional chord. Particularly since earlier in the week I’d attended an “Evening of Solidarity in Tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,” which took place at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale in association with Reverend Roger Hambrick and the Green Pastures Baptist Church.

Moshe understands that even though none of the parties to this conflict are Jews, and that he could stand aside and not risk being accused of having caused the evil, his Jewish responsibility is to do what he can to prevent the perpetration of injustice.

Unwelcome Guest    A family checked into the Park House Hotel in Boro Park last week under an assumed name (we now know it was...

The city of Lodz had once been the second largest Jewish community in all of Poland.

From the beginning, Israel's policy on its nuclear weapons and doctrine has been to keep the bomb quietly in the "basement." To be sure, this deliberate policy of nuclear ambiguity has done very little to deter "ordinary" conventional enemy aggressions or acts of terror. But it does seem to have been entirely adequate in keeping Israel's foes from mounting existential attacks.

I recently joined an overflow crowd of more than 1,000 current or former Bnei Akiva members for a reunion at the Jerusalem Theater.

A recent Gallop Poll found that 56% of Americans think the media’s coverage of events in Iraq is inaccurate, nearly two-thirds of those believing that the media portray the situation as worse than it is. A biased, always bad-news-baring mainstream media trying to discredit our war effort is a disgrace. But worse is the blatant manufacturing of news through editorials disguised as reports.

The war started last July with Hizbullah’s cross-border attack on an Israeli patrol and the kidnapping of three Israeli soldiers. The daring move, across the internationally recognized, UN-ratified border with Lebanon, gave rise to an immediate sense of purpose to most Israelis in uniform, both regular army personnel and your average citizen-soldier like me.

For years, Israel’s critics have excoriated the Jewish state’s plans to build a temporary barrier on its border with the West Bank. It was counterproductive, they would say. It would not protect Israelis, and it would cause undue hardship for Palestinians. Last week, the critics were proven wrong.

In 1844, a biblical scholar and professor of Hebrew at New York University published a pamphlet urging the establishment of a Jewish state in the place then known as Palestine. The name of this early Zionist who argued for the recreation of Jewish sovereignty over the land of Israel: George Bush.

Jews throughout the world recently celebrated the festival of Chanukah. Each year we are told Chanukah represents the quintessential Jewish value of absolute religious freedom: the right to worship anyone or anything – or to worship nothing – according to one’s own personal inclination. This is a strange interpretation of a festival celebrating the victory of religious fundamentalists over modernizers and whose story begins with Matityahu’s beheading of a fellow Jew who was exercising his “fundamental right” to worship as he pleased by sacrificing a pig.

We recently marked the secular new year, and while there’s nothing inherently Jewish about it, perhaps one of the practices associated with January 1 can help ameliorate a shortcoming not at all uncommon among Jews in the workforce.

The Dec. 29 front-page essay on Harry Truman by this modest scrivener continues to generate a heartening response – and not just from Jewish Press readers, as the piece was featured on FrontPageMag.com and reprinted by the Kansas City Jewish Chronicle in Truman’s home state of Missouri.

Uncomfortable Truth   The Palestinians under Yasir Arafat supported Iraq in the first Gulf War. Recently declassified documents record that they were complicit in the...

What [would be] the effect of Israel-PA agreements in bringing about a Palestinian state? Here, it is altogether probable that Israel's substantial loss of strategic depth would be recognized by Iran as a significant military liability for Tel-Aviv. Such recognition, in turn, could heat up Iranian intentions against Israel, occasioning an accelerated search for relevant capabilities and consequently a heightened risk of nuclear war initiated from Tehran.

As of December 4, 2006, an exhibition recapitulating the international project, "Do Not be Afraid to Know Me" is being presented in the Opole town hall.

There is a widespread perception in Israel that Sephardic Jews are more sensible than the rest of us. Sephardim, or "Oriental Jews" as they are commonly if mistakenly called (strictly speaking, the two terms are not interchangeable), tend to shy away from the various manifestations of non-moderation that afflict Ashkenazi or "Western" Jews.

Superficially, Jewish history is a maze of uncorrelated events with the Jewish people zigzagging throughout the globe and interacting with different nations and cultures in widely diverse conditions.

On April 27, 1987, as director of the Office of Special Investigations (OSI) in the Justice Department, I notified the INS that Austrian President Kurt Waldheim was to be placed on the “Watchlist” of persons barred from entering the United States.

The recent reunion, in Washington, D.C., of activists from the Soviet Jewry protest movement was an opportunity to see old friends and reminisce about a bygone era. But for Philadelphia attorney Joe Smukler, it was also a time to reflect on the lessons to be learned from their unique, history-changing experiences.

Saddam Hussein grew up barefoot in a mud hut in the town of Takrit, north of Baghdad on the Tigris River. He never met his father. His mother, Subha Tulfah, was deeply disturbed, suicidal and homicidal. She repeatedly tried to kill the child in her womb. According to one, probably apocryphal, account, she jumped in front of a bus and screamed: “I am giving birth to the devil!” Some witnesses recalled the pregnant woman banging a door against her extended belly.

Funny thing about Joe Biden, Democrat of Delaware and newly minted presidential hopeful: The media herd has this habit of portraying him as sharp, cerebral, one of the U.S. Senate’s Deep Thinkers – and yet every time he opens his mouth you hold your breath, wondering whether he’ll say something he’ll instantly regret.

Simply put, Orthodoxy is unwilling to implicitly or explicitly renounce its most basic claim - the uniqueness of its truth, and its central focus that Jewish law is binding.

Truman's Anti-Israel Policies    Jason Maoz is correct that Harry Truman was a most "ambiguous" friend, and not just because of his anti-Semitic diatribes ("Harry...

I have written previously here about Iran's nuclearization and its accompanying intent to annihilate Israel. Still, the whole story has not yet been told, and it is now time to think more carefully and systematically about ensuring Israel's survival. The time for exclusively visceral reactions is now over. Instead, we must ask: What, precisely, does the Iranian fusion of nuclear capability and genocidal intent really mean for Israel?

In 2002, Israel surrounded the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem to restrain a group of 39 Arab terrorist gunmen who were firing at them from inside the church.

Saul Wahl's story is one of the most intriguing of all the legendary stories concerning Polish Jewry.

Gerald Ford, who passed away last week at age 93, was considered a solid friend of Israel throughout his long Congressional career.

Ten years ago I was newly married, newly immigrated to Israel, and newly enrolled as a Masters student at an Israeli University. In most of my classes I was the only Orthodox student, and at least once a semester every pro-fessor could be counted on to make a derogatory comment or two about Jews like me. We were hypocritical, primi-tive, etc.