How would you thank someone for saving your life? What if they saved your son’s life? Your niece or your nephew? What if they saved the life of your grandchild?
Would you welcome them into your life? Would you give them a teapot? Some soap or maybe towels? Would you give them a pot needed for cooking, or perhaps some rice so they may eat? Would you show them how to use a bus if they did not know how? Would you help them shop, or take them to the local farmers’ markets so they have fresh food?read more
I went to the J Street conference in Washington over the weekend. An interesting time was had by all. There were plenty of denunciations of Trump and Netanyahu, talk of resistance, plenty of interesting speakers, including several members of Knesset, US senators (Chris Murphy, Tim Kaine, Bernie Sanders), prominent Palestinians, diplomats, journalists, big machers from the American Jewish community, the whole ball of wax. There were a lot of enthusiastic young people, along with a fair number of curdled and cynical old timers like myself, old enough to have seen too many dreams smashed too often to hold out much hope, though I try to rain only on my parade and not the parades of others.read more
Six women meet in Parshat Shemot and change the course of Jewish history. The first Torah portion of the book of Exodus introduces us to six “amizot”, six unique and brave women. Each woman in her own way takes a critical part in the grand saga of the liberation of the Israelites from Egyptian slavery.
We start the book of Exodus with the challenge of historical memory. “A new king, who did not know Joseph, came into power over Egypt. He announced to his people “The Israelites are becoming too numerous and strong for us.”(Exodus 1:9). He outlines a plan of oppression and infanticide to rectify this problem. He is thwarted in this endeavor by the first two women we meet in the parsha. Puah and Shifra, professional midwives who work in the Jewish quarter. Pharaoh commands these women to carry out his nefarious plan. They are charged with killing all male Hebrew children. They don’t do it. With the fear of the Almighty and with their own professional ethics, they stand up to authority and commit acts of civil disobedience. “The Hebrew women are not like the Egyptians” replied the midwives to Pharaoh, “They know how to deliver. They can give birth before a midwife even gets to them”. (Exodus 1:19)read more
When you stand in the Esnoga, the massive Portuguese Synagogue in Amsterdam, built in 1675, you are aware that you are standing in one of the most remarkable places in the Jewish world. Standing there, alone, with a friend, as I did on a recent quiet Sunday morning, you can only gape at its ambition, its vaulted ceilings, its elaborate candelabras. (Its services are still only lit by candlelight.)
There isn’t a Jewish community anywhere quite like that in Amsterdam. There was little Jewish presence in the city before 1600. And then, as the Netherlands made its astonishing rise from minor Hapsburg dominion to the most powerful economic power in the world, Jews started to come in large numbers. Because of the Hapsburg connection, most of the Jews came from Portugal, and unlike any other Jewish community, before or since, it was largely comprised of new Jews, persons who hadn’t started their lives as Jews, but as conversos. They were primarily individuals who wanted to be Jewish, but really didn’t know much about their religion, and in this, two centuries before Jewish emancipation, they were the first modern Jewish community, having to find and create their traditions, rather than being born into one.read more
Outside the Minnesota Governor’s Mansion in St Paul following the killing of Philando Castile. Fibonacci Blue / Flickr
This time it was President Barack Obama who used the formula “because of the color of their skin,” after a police officer killed Philando Castile during a traffic stop for a broken taillight: “When incidents like this occur, there’s a big chunk of our citizenry that feels as if, because of the color of their skin, they are not being
treated the same.”
He was not the first and will not be the last to cast matters in that topsy-turvy way. Martin Luther King Jr’s reference to “the color of their skin” in his “I Have a Dream” speech has normalized the formula in Americans’ ears, though King probably considered it a reductio ad absurdum rather than an explanation.read more
There is increasing debate about the nature and legitimacy of Zionism and the State of Israel. It is a sign of our times that the approach is often zero sum: either Zionism and Israel are A-OK and any criticism is forbidden or both the movement and state are wholly illegitimate and any regard for either is deplored.
We can do better than this. Like most things in life, these matters involve nuance and require analysis and understanding. Politics sometimes requires careful thought, not just sloganeering or frantic advocacy. In a careful – in fact, pained – spirit I offer the following.read more
My paternal uncle, Aaron, was a figure of mystery, a man I knew only through a photograph in his officer’s uniform. I knew little else about him until one day, when I was ten years old; my father received a letter from his widow Helen. After he finished reading it he told us that Uncle Aaron had left a wife and three children when he died in the war. They lived in Miskolc, a city on the banks of the Bodva River. My parents had met four years after Aaron’s death. By the time my father courted my mother, he had stopped speaking of his late brother.read more
Dear Prime Minister Netanyahu,
I write this letter to you with a heavy heart as it pains me deeply to see the beautiful dream of a strong and proud Israel, the country that was expected to embrace what is virtuous, moral, and just, now losing its reason for being—as a free and secure Jewish state living in peace and harmony with its neighbors.
The state’s social fabric is being torn apart by political divisiveness and economic injustice. The country is increasingly isolated, degenerating into a garrison state surrounding itself with walls and fences, vilified by friends and reviled by enemies.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
Why is this night different from all other nights? It is different because tonight President Obama will give his last State of the Union address.
Yet, there are news today of another unceremonious, undemocratic and without due process event, “ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] personnel have entered homes—sometimes without a warrant or consent—and roused children from beds before taking families into custody.”
The painful dissonance that frames this day was underscored as I heard on NPR this morning about the deportation of these children and mothers asylum seekers, and at the same time I read an appealing and democratic email from the much admired First Lady Michelle Obama, “Tonight, Ayala, Barack gives his final State of the Union speech, where he’ll talk about his vision for this next year and beyond. Everything we’ve accomplished…is possible only because of the incredible support we’ve seen from people like you, Ayala.
So I want to say thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for standing by our President’s side for the past seven years. And I want to make sure you’ll be tuning in tonight at 9:00 p.m. ET, so you can hear for yourself, one last time, what Barack has to say about how, together, we can keep moving our country forward: Thanks for standing with us, Ayala. Now, let’s finish what we started — together.” read more
How would you thank someone for saving your life? What if they saved your son’s life? Your niece or your nephew? What if they saved the life of your grandchild?
