When I was a boy in Brooklyn, the words “Labor Day” carried much weight, but they meant different things to different members of my family. To my father’s socially conscious, intellectually curious, working immigrant parents, it was the day to be thankful for the unions, to stand and march with all working people. It was myRead More
All eyes are fixed on — or averted from? — the ongoing debacle in California. But at least there, it’s all out in the open, for everyone to see and shake their heads at. Ever the contrarian, I have Texas on my mind even more than California.Texas in general, Houston in particular. The “in general” part has to do…Read More
Creating a memorial to the 600,000 Jews murdered at the Belzec death camp in Poland is of the utmost importance. It is profoundly distressing, however, that the planned memorial will feature an enormous trench running through the entire camp. The project has already disturbed — and will continue to disturb — the ashes and bonesRead More
Between March and December 1942, more than 600,000 Jews were murdered in the Belzec killing camp in Poland. In 1943, to cover up the crime, the Nazis demolished the camp and dug up and burned hundreds of thousands of bodies. Ashes, bones and bodies were buried in chaotic fashion.Ever since, Belzec has been abused. Under the Communist regime, theRead More
What, after all, do we mean by the term “Jewish identity?”For a while, during the height of the Jewish continuity craze of the early 1990s, it seemed as if we were producing a whole category of people whose Jewish identity consisted principally of urging others to “have” a Jewish identity — not only as a phenomenon, but also as…Read More
While the national media has been having a field day with the recall of Governor Gray Davis, we here in California have a perspective on the October 7 vote that has less to do with the big screen and more to do with the ballot box.What to pundits in the East appears to be some kind of illegitimate Republican plot or right-wing coup is nothing ofRead More
The Iraq morass looks bleaker every day, with American casualty numbers rising and the expenses associated with military deployments raising questions of affordability. Yet in testimony to Congress last month, the commander of American forces in the region, General Tommy Franks, maintained that American troop levels — now numbering about 148,000Read More
The conventional explanation for Israel’s more controversial measures, including in particular the security fence now under construction and the new marriage law passed by the Knesset, is that these are responses to the ongoing conflict. (The new marriage law cancels the automatic citizenship hitherto accorded Palestinian spouses…Read More
In Russia we were called “Zhids.” Here in America we are called “Russians.”Why is it that no one, including ourselves, seems to be calling us what we are: Jews?At the first annual “Russian Heritage Week,” held in June in New York with Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s blessing, the best and brightest of our community were paraded around asRead More
In his July 25 review of my book “Shattered Dreams,” Itamar Rabinovitch implies that any account which differs from those presented by “Clinton, Barak, Shlomo Ben-Ami, Dennis Ross” should be considered as “revisionist” (“Camp David Redux: The Reporter As Chronicler and Participant”).To this list of names, he adds Saudi PrinceRead More
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