It was like a football game of the damned, played in hell. You kept checking the score, every half hour. It was 14 dead, no, 22; no 35; no 42; no 55.   Meanwhile, 30 miles away, Ivanka Trump, justly described by Michelle Goldberg as a Zionist Marie Antoinette, was prancing and fluttering around the new US embassy in Jerusalem, toasting the murder of any chance of a peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. And apres Marie Antoinette, as they say, comes le deluge.

I don’t think the Israeli Palestinian conflict has ever made me angrier, and what was particularly infuriating was the vast number of commentators and acquaintances of mine who wanted to blame the victims, and called them Hamas terrorists or dupes of Hamas, denying the protestors their agency and more importantly, their humanity. With the events of this week, I have a deeper appreciation of how basically decent people can condone the worst forms of evil. read more

“Dr. King to Lead Fall Pilgrimage to the Holy Land,” the New York Times reported on May 15, 1967. (When will the Times stop calling Israel the Holy Land?) Martin Luther King, Jr. had announced the previous day his intention to have the pilgrimage in the fall, with two main stops, one, to be held on Nov 14 on the Mount of Olives in the Jordanian sector of Jerusalem, the other, two days later, in a gathering on the Galilee. Of course, by May 15, 1967, it was very late in the day to be speaking of the Jordanian sector of Jerusalem. In less than three weeks, conquered by Israel, it would be no more. The Six Day War ended King’s thoughts of a Middle East pilgrimage. read more

The history of Hasidism is the history of Judaism at its best, Judaism at its worst, Judaism at its most liberating, and Judaism at its most confining. Of all the movements that have transformed Judaism in the past three centuries, only Zionism, perhaps, has had more of a transforming impact on how Jews understand their religion. These thoughts are occasioned by reading a massive new doorstop of a book, tipping the scales at almost 900 pages, Hasidism: A New History, collectively written by eight historians. read more

On Wednesday, I received an envelope with a letter asking for my contribution to Louse Slaughter’s Re-Election Committee. The envelope, torn at the top is now on my desk and inside is the form that I was planning to send with my check. On Thursday when we heard that she was hospitalized, we prayed for her healing. We held on to the hope that she would recover, as she has done in the past. She would return to work for the people and I would double my contribution.

Friday morning came the shockingly sad news that we have lost our warrior congresswoman. Many in Washington and around the country will offer fitting eulogies for this brave, upright, principled and highly effective congresswoman. We, her constituents, will remember her in our own way. read more

My niece Shunamit, nicknamed Shuni, a woman with disabilities wrote what she would like people to know about her life: “I am 40 years of age. I work in Jerusalem at Hadassah Hospital Mount Scopus as a support person in the daycare center for chronically ill children. I am well liked at work, I learn and I improve, I am content and I do my job well.”

Her work narrative would not surprise people in the U.S., in Israel and in many countries where work is an integral part of defining adulthood. For people with disabilities like Shunamit, however, participation in the workplace is far from taken for granted and was brought about by an innovative program initiated by The Feuerstein Institute. read more

She heard four gunshots. It happened on Friday March 19 2004, in a Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem. It took place, she told me, shortly after her husband had returned from synagogue. As on every Friday night they followed Jewish Sabbath practices, they sang the song welcoming God’s angels to their home, blessed the wine, washed their hands, made the blessing over the challah bread and started the meal when she heard the shots.

She ran to the porch and looked three stories down and there in the parking lot was a person lying on the ground. She told her husband to pick up the phone, which they would not ordinarily do on the Sabbath. He called an ambulance and they both ran down as fast as they could. She recognized the young man. For sometime she had done some brisk walking in the neighborhood and had seen the man jogging. They had exchanged greetings, but nothing more. read more