The occasion that we now call Rosh Hashana, is referred to in the Bible only as Zihron Teruah – the Day of Remembering with Sound. One is bound to ask: “remembering what? And what does the sound of the Shofar have to do with it?” The idea of remembering is repeated many times throughout the Torah. It figures prominently in three important specific…
The Jews of Mashhad
History is going out of fashion. It is declining as a subject taught at universities. It is seen as irrelevant to the great surge of technology and finance and out of favor with the politics of “me” and “now”. People are reluctant to talk about the past for fear of raising issues such as imperialism, slavery, religious oppression and counter…
Evolution
In a recent article, Yale University computer science professor, David Gelernter, said that Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution has too many holes and is now too old to be a probable scientific theory. Gelernter, who the New York Times called a “rock star”, also argues that intelligent design (ID) is a genuine theory that cannot be dismissed by researchers with anti-religious sentiments. …
President Truman George Marshal and Israel
American Jewry is split over whether Donald Trump is the most pro-Israel or pro-Jewish president in the history of the USA. It illustrates how divided and antagonistic the different parts of the so-called United States and the Jewish community are. Before Trump, most people who knew anything about history would have said it was Truman who in 1947 supported the…
Adam Kirsch
There are few contemporary Jewish writers in the USA I am interested in meeting. They invariably use what Jewish religion they have to rebel against it or to ridicule it. I have no common language with completely secular Jewish writers – although of course I respect their freedom to choose and to be who they want. ON the other hand…
Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison, the celebrated, black, American novelist and Nobel Prize winner for literature, died recently. She was a moving exponent of Black life and culture and chronicler and of the suffering of Black Americans. But she had a blind spot when it came to Jews and Israel. She was a holocaust revisionist and anti-Zionist. So I am re-blogging something I wrote concerning…