Thoughts on Gaza
Peter Eisenstadt

How can I write about the Gaza War? How can I not write about the Gaza War? These are the questions I have tormenting myself with this summer, trying to write something and finding, time and again, that I can’t.

On the one hand, the Gaza War has been an absolute horror, a war blundered into by both sides, a war that has accomplished nothing, has solved nothing, has created over 2,000 corpses, destroyed countless buildings, and has made, if possible, both sides hate and fear the other side more than before.   And if you add the still developing story of ISIS to the mix, this August is right up there with the famously unfun summers of 1914 and 1939 as one of the most unrelievedly gloomy and depressing summers of all time. read more

Ferguson Must Have an American Response
Peter Eisenstadt and Ayala Emmett
August 28 2014

Michael Brown, an unarmed 18 year old, shot and killed, his body uncovered, exposed to the sun for more than four hours–was finally laid to rest on Monday. For the last time, and finally with dignity, Michael Brown a mother’s child, a father’s namesake was surrounded, embraced, and mourned by family, friends, ordinary citizens, celebrities, clergy and politicians. So many people inside the church and outside paid their respects but America, or more specifically, white America–with very few exceptions–was absent. There were no visible white clergy and no 2016 political aspirants. It seemed that the Ferguson tragedy was black Americans’ grief. read more

God in the IDF: Two Israeli Colonels Write Letters
August 22, 2014

The Jewish Pluralist publishes today two letters by IDF Colonels with opposing views on the place of God and religion in the Israeli army. The letters were sent to us by David Langerman and Batya Sadot who served in the IDF. They are concerned that the IDF historic freedom from religious coercion has been eroded.

The letters of the two commanders capture a move to bring religion as policy into the IDF and the distress and fears that this move has caused; the letters are published here in their entirety. The first letter, by Colonel Ofer Winter commander of the Givati Brigade was addressed to all Givati soldiers, placing God at the center of the battle in Rafah; the second letter was a critical response by Colonel (Reserve) Ilan Eshel claiming that religion as policy has no place in the IDF. read more

Thoughts In Times of War
Paul Goldberg
Written in Rochester, NY
August 18, 2014

Forces driving me today, war in Israel and indeed in the entire area, but really my own focus is Israel and war in Ukraine, which seems more immediate since our time in Kiev and the Baltic capitals only last October.

I watch the news in so many ways, listening to NPR, reading the Kindle edition of the New York Times, reading emails and stories on Facebook and Google+ and oh yes sometimes on the television, although I must admit that the Daily Show and Colbert Report are more likely to capture my attention than CNN, NBC or Fox. It seems that no matter how I let the world into my awareness, no matter how I try to filter the media stream, word of war/terrorism/mindless killing will find its way into my awareness. read more

My Mom and Lauren Bacall
Peter Eisenstadt

My mom loved Lauren Bacall. Perhaps that is not the right word. My mom was Lauren Bacall. You have to understand that my late mother, Betty Eisenstadt (nee Cooperstein) was not the sort of woman who spent her time pouring over movie magazines or gazing at Hollywood stars. She was a serious young woman. But the similarities were too strong and striking to be ignored.

They were both Bettys. Bacall was born Betty Joan Perske. (My mom was actually born Bessie Cooperstein, but when she was a teenager her sisters told her that Bessie was a name for a cow, not a young woman, and she became Betty.) They were about the same age—Bacall was two years older than my mom. They both were native New Yorkers who grew up on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, or really, in Yorkville, when it still was one of the largest German communities in the city. (My mom remembered her and her girlfriends trying to disturb assemblies of the pro-Nazi German-American Bund by throwing paper bags of horse manure into meetings.) They both attended the same high school, Julia Richman, a “commercial school” that tracked many bright young women, like my mom and Lauren Bacall, away from a college prep, academic track. And perhaps most important, they both were Jews, daughters of immigrants, members of the first large cohort of Eastern European Jews born in the United States. read more

A Militarized Assault on Grief
Ayala Emmett
August 14, 2014

Last night we saw on our television screens armored vehicles carrying mounted gunners pointing ominously at unarmed grieving people. No, it was not in the Middle East. The pictures we saw were live from Ferguson Missouri.

The local authorities brought to the streets of Ferguson masses of police in full riot gear, not really trained in dealing with demonstrations according to the chief of police, but armed to battle. This militarized presence of police was there to disperse a grieving community protesting the killing of Michael (Mike) Brown. Last night in Ferguson grief replaced earlier anger in a peaceful vigil of citizens of the United States exercising their right of freedom of assembly. read more

On Robin Williams
Peter Eisenstadt

For the most part, television comedies and the movies are distractions, from our daily realities and from the sad world around us, but at times, they intrude, directly, into life’s darker places. The death of Robin Williams, by suicide, is such an occasion. One thing that is almost always true of the aftermath of suicides is that most people do not know how to talk about it. It is the most shocking form of death, more uncomfortable than any form of “natural” death or even murder. It seems to question, in the most direct way possible, our efforts to find life meaningful or worthwhile. “There is only one truly philosophical problem,” wrote Albert Camus in the famous opening of his essay, The Myth of Sisyphus, “and that is suicide.” But if suicide is a philosophical problem, it is not the sort of problem which has a single, right, technical answer. read more

Peace And A Two States Agreement in Bad Times: Two Editorial Views
Ayala Emmett and Peter Eisenstadt

Ayala:
These are horrific times: the war so far has brought about deaths, sorrow, destruction and daily life of unimagined uncertainty and anxiety in Israel for both its peoples and for Palestinians in the West Bank and in Gaza.

Those who support peace and a two states agreement seem to have been silenced by the fire of the guns and the poison of the pen, by a demand for unity in the United States and an eruption of anti-Semitism in Europe. read more

Arabs and Jews in Israel: A Letter
Moran Tal
August 3, 2014
Haifa Israel

Dear Ayala Shalom,

I am sorry that it has taken me a few days to send you this e-mail. I was occupied with trying to fill our home with warmth and love, which are in short supply these days.

As you know I am a Muslim Arab woman, the daughter of two Jewish (non-biological) parents, and married to a Christian Arab. It is very difficult, uncomfortable and kind of a shock to hear and read such racist slogans on the street these days that proclaim death to my parents, or proclaim death to me, my husband and his family from the other side. The current popular sentiment in the country is that all Arabs are murderers, and all Jews are war criminals who kill children. read more