On August 13, 2014 we saw on our television screens armored vehicles carrying mounted gunners pointing ominously at unarmed grieving people. This militarized presence of police in Ferguson Missouri was there to disperse a grieving community protesting the killing of Michael Brown a young black teenage man about to start college. Eighteen months after the shooting of Michael Brown the Department of Justice filed a civil lawsuit against the city of Ferguson. Yesterday, Attorney General Loretta Lynch said, “Residents of Ferguson have suffered the deprivation of their constitutional rights” and in 2014 we had witnessed a display of this kind of trampling of citizens’ constitutional rights, “of using force without legal justification.” read more

The Temple in Jerusalem as a House of prayer for the Israelites – individuals in times of need and the nation in times of crisis – is mentioned for the first time in King Solomon’s prayer. The Temple in Jerusalem would be a place where “every prayer and petition offered by a human being (Adam)… with palms turned toward this House, You will hear it up there in Heaven the place of Your Dwelling.” Beyond the particular peoplehood and nation King Solomon designated and consecrated the Temple as a universal house of prayer for all of humanity that would include “the strangers, the non-Israelite who is coming to pray in this House. You will hear their prayers up above in the place of Your Dwelling.” * read more

Again, and yet again, thousands of Negev Bedouin (Arab citizens of Israel) live under threat of home demolition. Today I will focus on mostly 1,200 victims from Negev villages of A-Tir and Um Al-Hiran.

Here is what we might read in a few months… The Israel Land Administration (ILA), with the assistance of an unusually large police force and IDF soldiers, demolished dozens of tin shack homes in unrecognized Bedouin villages Um Al-Hiran and A-Tir in the northern Negev.

The ILA is destroying the village and evacuating the inhabitants so that a Jewish Community named “Hiran” can be established in the area and the Yatir forest can be expanded. read more

1) The question of the hour for liberal Democrats is the choice. Who will it be? For those living in South Carolina, where the primary is coming up in a few weeks, the decision is imminent.

2) Hillary Clinton has been at the forefront of American politics for an astonishingly long time, for a quarter-century. No one else on the scene from the early 1990s, including her husband, is still a major political player. It is a career with few parallels, male or female, in recent American political history. read more

Last Sunday we crossed the Ford Street Bridge, three Jewish women in a car with a GPS looking for Mt. Olivet Baptist Church. We were on our way to join a prayer service to celebrate the life and legacy of Dr. King. Our visit would be the second part of a get-together that had begun on Friday at Temple B’rith Kodesh, welcoming the Reverend Rickey Harvey and members of Mt. Olivet Church. Magnificent music had infused our Sabbath service as our two choirs joined. We sang, bodies swaying and hands clapping in the presence of oneness of Jews and African Americans praying without borders and with boundless joy. The service defied histories of divisions, refused acrimonies and produced a “we the people.” read more

“You will be liberated! God hasn’t forgotten you! The Almighty has heard your cries!” declares Moshe as he speaks to the Israelites in the beginning of the book of Exodus( parshat VeEra). Pretty good news you might say. Did they cheer and run to their homes to pack up their paltry possession? Did they breathe a sigh of relief and hug one another thrilled that their ordeal would soon be over? Were they revved up and ready to go? No, no, no- they looked back at Moshe with empty eyes and a shrug. The Torah tells us that “ ve- lo shamu el Moshe mkotzer ruach omavoda kasha.” (They didn’t listen to Moshe because of a contraction of their spirit and all the hard work.” This phrase “kotzer ruach” has been translated as anguish or disappointment, but neither of these translations catch the heavy weight of a people so long oppressed that the eternal hope, that tiny little flame, that often buoys a people through difficult experiences is barely a flicker. read more

A group of starving young students from Manchuria assembled during mid-morning on Legation Street in Beijing only four days after my husband and I arrived for our vacation. They sat quietly and in an orderly fashion. They had sent a representative to petition the mayor for provisions of food. We had front row seats to the event as our compound was across the way from the mayor’s residence. The students looked no more than thirteen or fourteen years old. They had no weapons. They just sat on the street waiting for their spokesman to return from the mayor’s mansion. The group politely moved aside to make room for me when I went out to shop for antiques that afternoon. Mort and I happened to return from our respective errands at the same time. read more

It is not easy to cede the moral high ground to one Donald Trump, but Ted Cruz accomplished this remarkable feat by accusing his rival for the Republican presidential nomination of being an incarnation of “New York values”—“I think most people know exactly what New York values are: socially liberal, pro gay-marriage, pro-abortion, focused on money and the media.” Trump, in response, knocked Cruz’s crude slurs out of the park, speaking of 9/11 and the subsequent rebuilding.

It is a myth that New York City is the archetypal liberal city. Since the end of the term of John Lindsay in 1973 to the election of Bill DeBlasio in 2013, New York City elected exactly one liberal for one term, David Dinkins, along with the moderate Democrat Abe Beame; three terms of the conservative Democrat Ed Koch; two terms of the even more conservative Republican, Rudolf Giuliani; and three terms of the moderate to conservative quasi Republican mega-billionaire, Michael Bloomberg. And as Trump pointed out, New York City was the home of William F. Buckley, to which many other conservative luminaries can be added; Brooklyn born and raised economist Milton Friedman, as well as that lifetime New Yorker, Madison Grant, the author of The Passing of the Great Race, and in my opinion, the most influential anti-Semite in American history. read more

Over the weekend, I attended the American Historical Association (AHA) annual convention in Atlanta. Historians, as a rule, are not a particularly raucous bunch, and the 3,500 or so historians generally went about their business quietly, delivering papers, buying books, trying to cadge free food at various receptions, and the like. But there was one exciting moment. At the business meeting, there was a vote on a resolution introduced by an organization called Historians Against the War (HAW)condemning Israeli interference with higher education and academic freedom on the West Bank and Gaza, and calling on the AHA to monitor Israel’s behavior. This resolution was tailored to garner as much support as possible, and unlike earlier resolutions introduced by HAW, it did not explicitly call for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions. Still, it was an attempt to get the AHA on record against Israel’s educational policies, and perhaps use it as a toehold from which to launch stronger BDS resolutions. read more

It’s winter, and because we live in an area where there’s snow on the ground for nearly as many months as there’s not, it’s sometimes hard not to experience the doldrums. Last year, my partner and I decided to find a way to combat the negativity that winter brings by focusing on the little things that brought us joy. We decided to take our favorite glass cookie jar and repurpose it. It became what we called our Joy Jar, and we set it in a prominent spot in our kitchen so we’d pass it every day. read more