Opinion // Obama’s Distorted Views on Israel
by Peter Berkowitz
The president's quest for even-handedness is misguided and dangerous.
Speaking at Harvard University in October, Secretary of State John Kerry asserted that “a massive...
Opinion // What Do We Mean By Jewish Continuity?
We all want Jewish grandchildren—but are we going about it the right way?
Opinion // Yitzhak Rabin’s Legacy Is Very Much Alive
If you think Israel’s “right” is “nationalistic” and the “left” wants “peace,” think again.
Book Review // Killing a King
The assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin 20 years ago produced instant analysis of unusual accuracy. Typically, it takes decades for the air to clear enough for history to make a sound judgment, especially in the Middle East. But when Rabin was shot in the back in November 1995, the Israelis of various camps who either mourned or celebrated what they thought the murder meant for their country turned out to be exactly right.
Religion & Violence // A Moment Symposium
Is there something about religion that is inherently violent, or is it a myth that religion leads to violence? And since much of the contemporary religious violence in the news is connected to Islam, is this a Muslim problem—or a broader human one? We posed these questions to a wide-ranging group of thinkers.
Opinion // The Rise of the Rebel Rabbis
Can a small group of Orthodox leaders shake up the Israeli rabbinate?
Jewish Word // Glitch
Technology inexplicably fails us often enough to need a word for the occasion, and glitch has slipped in to fill the void. Newspaper headlines routinely illustrate the word’s versatility and popularity. When thousands of travelers find themselves stranded: “Computer glitch cancels East Coast flights.” When a much-anticipated website launch screeches to a halt: “HealthCare.gov’s glitches prompt…
Ruth Wisse: Education of a Jewish Conservative
There are few more outspoken proponents of conservative ideas in North American Jewry today than Ruth Wisse: pioneer of the academic study of modern Jewish literature, longtime professor of Yiddish and Yiddish literature at McGill and Harvard, essayist, political commentator and author of a dozen books. In works such as If I Am Not for Myself: The Liberal Betrayal of the Jews, Wisse argues that Jews must stop blaming themselves for the hatred, past and present, of Judaism and Jews.
Book Review // The Crime and the Silence: Confronting the Massacre of Jews in Wartime Jedwabne
As a university student in Warsaw in the first half of the 1970s, I used to spend much of my summer vacation hitchhiking around the country. This is how one fine July day I found myself in Jedwabne, a nondescript but beautifully located small town in Poland’s Northeast. Wandering through the meadows and forests, I lost my sense of direction and eventually had to ask a local for the road out of town.
Ladder, Roof, River, Sky // Fiction by Alan Cheuse
Years went by, one lavishly slow day at a time, with hot summers, when we baked our bodies at the beach down the street or, on an occasional excursion, on the sands at Asbury Park or Bradley Beach some hours south of home, where we swam also in the pungent salty ocean waters; then came translucent autumn light, with the High Holidays catching our attention as much for the hours at synagogue they demanded of us as any sense of the holiness of things.
Ask The Rabbis // The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement
Should rabbis talk to their congregants about BDS?
Birthright Denied
On Monday, September 23, 2013, Juliana Deguis Pierre was mopping the floors of the house of a wealthy family in the Dominican capital of Santo Domingo when a journalist from the daily newspaper El Caribe appeared at the door. “They can’t give you your document because your father came from Haiti,” the journalist told her before snapping her photo without permission and abruptly departing.