Readers of my blog will know that I do not hold back from criticizing Israeli politicians and policies and that I think that occupation, or however one describes the situation on the West Bank or in Judea and Samaria, is neither healthy nor morally sustainable. Why, even the Scots cannot bear to be under the English. But for the love…
Memorials and Days
We are right in the middle of all sorts of memorial days. But I wonder. Do they do any good? My late father was born in London, into a modest home in a poor working-class district of London. Even as teenager he was heavily involved in social issues and supported the UK Labour Party in its attempts to redress the…
Shavuot: An Identity Crisis
Plato’s theory of ideas and Aristotle’s more empirical approach are the foundations of the Western intellectual tradition. The result of this patrimony has been the search for truth, even absolute truth, which I believe has tended to constrict our way of thinking and reflect the desire to find a specific answer to every problem assuming there is one. In our…
What keeps Judaism alive?
It is a thought often attributed to Ernest Bloch that it is anti-Semitism that, for all its perniciousness, has preserved the Jews. Of course, if that were true our position in the world would be very different today. After all (according to the Encyclopedia Judaica) Jews accounted for about 1% of the population of the Roman Empire at a time…
Uses and Abuses
Muslim activists have been exerting pressure within state schools in Birmingham UK to Islamize them by firing or sidelining uncooperative staff, segregating and discriminating against non-Muslim pupils, removing parts and whole subjects of the state curriculum that they deem offensive, and inviting al-Qaeda members and jihadi imams to speak. According to the UK Daily Telegraph, April 2014: “At least six…
R.Michael Lerner – Embracing Israel/Palestine
It have been reading Michael Lerner’s book Embracing Israel/Palestine: A Strategy to Heal and Transform the Middle East during the week of Israeli Independence Day. The establishment of a Jewish homeland has been the single most important positive historical fact of my lifetime as a Jew. If ever there was a latter day miracle this was it. I would do…