Nahum Barnea

An Interview with Nahum Barnea

In an exclusive interview with Moment senior editor George E. Johnson, Israel Prize-winning journalist Nahum Barnea offers fresh insights on how Naftali Bennett, Israel’s new Prime Minister, will govern and why it may be different in both method and substance from his predecessor and from what people may have assumed based on policy positions and priorities Bennett has espoused as a member of Benjamin Netanyahu’s inner circle. Barnea focuses on how President Biden’s long experience and record in Middle East politics presents opportunities for Israel in the years ahead regarding the region and Iran in particular, and why Bennett will depart from Netanyahu’s approach to seeking allies among Americans in general and among American Jews.

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Are We All Hasidim?

In a world in which any Jew is a potential target of anti-Semitism, it is the most visible Jews who are most threatened. Jews with black hats, with tight curls hanging down below their ears and black coats and women wearing modest head coverings, they are the most vulnerable. Jews in synagogues. In Brooklyn, as in Jersey City and Monsey, violence against individuals in their Hasidic communities is almost an everyday event. If someone wants to do harm to a Jew, Hasidic Jews and their communities are and have become easy targets.

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Jewish Word | Shamash

n the 1946 film The Big Sleep, based on the Raymond Chandler mystery of the same name, Carmen—the promiscuous, drug-addicted younger sister of Lauren Bacall’s character—sizes up Philip Marlowe, played by Humphrey Bogart, and asks him, “What are you, a prizefighter?” Bogart responds, “No, I’m a shamus.” “What’s a shamus?” she inquires. “It’s a private detective,” he answers. Yes, Bogart is using the Yiddish version—more popularly spelled “shammes”—of the Hebrew word, “shamash.”

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