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

As women who care deeply about the future of our country, we want to build a tower of love and strength for you. We are appalled by the ignorant misrepresentation of you by TV networks that seek ratings through false controversies.

The two candidates vying for office are in no way comparable. You are an experienced stateswoman, the best-prepared presidential candidate of our time. Your opponent is a huckster. TV journalists treat the fraud with respect while they attack the stateswoman with impunity. read more

Let’s begin at the end—Go see Michal Aviad’s new film Dimona Twist. This marvelous movie is also about my mother, about women who lived in Casablanca and other modern French colonial cities that resembled Paris far more than Dimona.

Women and their families who migrated with dreams of a Jewish harmonious Garden of Eden found themselves deceitfully and deliberately pushed off trucks in God forsaken far away places like Dimona, Beit Shemesh and Bat Yam, to fulfill a national dream of conquering the desert and settling the land; an aspiration that others dreamed for them. The Women could not comprehend the display of superiority by the locals and were furious at the arrogance of “the first Israel toward the second Israel,” which was, as one of the women says, without justifications. read more

Today, August 26, is a celebration of a long journey for women’s equality marked by the many who fought for it.

The list is long, but the thrust of the struggle for women’s rights began in Seneca Falls, NY in 1848. It witnessed Susan B. Anthony’s clarion call for women’s right to vote, which was finally granted in 1920. Women’s Equality Day was conceived by Representative Bella Abzug to commemorate the 1920 certification of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution.

Abzug led the successful act in the U.S. Congress in 1971 to designate August 26 as Women’s Equality Day. read more

This is my response to a political email you sent me supporting Trump.

I must say that it astonishes me that any Jewish person, observant or not, could support Trump’s views. Only a short time ago in Germany, Italy and the Soviet union, demagogues arose who started out with Trump’s exact rhetoric. They demonized minorities of all sorts, including Jews and other ethnic groups, disabled people, LGBT, people of different political philosophies.

Have you seen the propaganda posters of Jews as vermin and thieves? Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini blamed Jews for the economic ills of the time. Those leaders also said, as Trump says daily that they were the only one who could save humanity. The logical conclusion for their policy of vilification was the Gulag and Auschwitz. read more

I did not pay much attention to the intertwining of love and voting, until I had a conversation with some friends, working class women.

I was aware that research indicated that in 2016 working class white men tended to vote for Trump, yet he was losing working class women. I have not however, explored or questioned the domestic dynamics of husband and wife who split their votes.

I have known this group of women friends for a number of years; they are all remarkably hardworking, often holding two or three jobs. I have been meeting with them quite frequently and we have shared personal stories and recipes, and exchanged holiday gifts; we mostly stayed away from politics. But in the last few months we have been talking about the rise of Trump in the political arena. read more