Tag: Semitism

In my last column I wrote of the anguish and sorrow that fills the hearts of our brethren in Israel nowadays, and I wrote of the all-too-real curses that are enumerated in Parashat Ki Tavo. There is one curse however, that at first glance, may be difficult to understand, but if you take a moment to think about it, you will realize how poignantly it speaks to us: "And it shall be, if you will not hearken to the voice of the L-rd your G-d to observe and perform all His commandments and all His decrees that I command you today, then all His curses will come upon you and overtake you" (Deuteronomy 28:58).

Sam Ehrenhalt, whose op-ed articles and letters to the editor always enhance The Jewish Press, has shared with the Monitor a thoughtful note he recently dispatched to New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller.

The Monitor really hadn't planned on writing once again about Harry Truman.

President Bush's choice of Rudy Giuliani to head the United States delegation to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's first-ever conference on anti-Semitism was an inspired one.

Willard Gaylin, M.D., a prominent psychotherapist and psychoanalyst, as well as Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, has written one of the most important recent books dealing with the etiology of all kinds of hatred, including those that are purely personal, and that may have actual meaning, of the person who hates, as well as those derived from delusional thought, including (but certainly not limited to), anti-Semitism.

This past week, the Anti Defamation League went public with a criticism of "mainline" Arab-American groups for failing to speak out against anti-Semitism and terrorist acts committedagainst Jews by Palestinians and other Arabs. The ADL point that such failure only tends tolegitimatize and ultimately to encourage such behavior is surely a valid one.

Special Note: In last week's column I shared with you the first part of a letter from an American gentile who lives in Munich, Germany, describing the covert and overt anti-Semitism that continues to plague that country, and for that matter, the world. The letter once again reinforces the old truth, we remain "one lamb among 70 wolves" and those wolves stand ready to pounce upon us and devour us. We dare not forget that we have only One Friend, and that is Avinu She'Bashamayim, our Heavenly Father.

The support for Nazi war criminals repeatedly voiced by Patrick J. Buchanan (examples of which were offered in this space last week) is but one harsh note in the syndicated columnist's ongoing primal scream against Jews and Israel.

As he did back in 1990 and 1991, Patrick Buchanan is once again fanning the flames of anti-Semitism with his allegations that an American administration is calling the nation to arms at the urging of Jews on behalf of the Jewish state.

While there is of course more than one way to look at the last two centuries of Jewish life on the planet, one instructive way to summarize them might be as a two-hundred year search for an alternative to traditional Orthodoxy.

Sounding a theme recurrent in these pages, Fiamma Nirenstein has penned an article, "How Suicide Bombers Are Made," appearing in the current issue of Commentary magazine, which concludes that the problem with Yasir Arafat and company is not that they can't seem to keep their word or that they disagree with this or that Israel imposition, or indeed that they have a recurrent violent bent. It is that they reflect a fundamental difficulty among Arabs with the notion of a Jewish state in the Middle East.