
David N. Myers teaches Jewish history at UCLA.
David N. Myers teaches Jewish history at UCLA.
This past Saturday saw the untimely passing of Professor Ruth Gavison z”l, one of Israel’s leading intellectuals and legal minds, at the age of 75. Ruth Gavison was the rarest of individuals: a searingly brilliant legal theorist and a deeply engaged citizen in the life of her country, a person with little patience for small…
The prominent Jewish historian, Steven M. Lowenstein, passed away at his home in Los Angeles after a ten-month struggle with pancreatic cancer. He had largely completed a massive scholarly project on which he had been working for decades: a 731-page study of the demographic history of German Jewry. This alone would stand as a remarkable…
Previous Article Next Article Never has the period between Passover and Shavuot been like this. The 49 days of counting the Omer, to which I have been a bit too episodically attentive over the years, have never had more significance to me. Today, these seven weeks provide a measuring stick for our confinement during the…
In the endless stream of stories about the COVID-19 pandemic, an unsettling sub-plot has been the actions, or lack thereof, of various Haredi groups in the New York metropolitan area. Reports of a swarm of positive test results in Borough Park and Williamsburg have raised fears of a cluster outbreak, triggered by a small number…
Dear Jewish Supporters of Donald Trump, The last few weeks have been deeply troubling ones for our country. There is, of course, the ongoing impeachment drama involving an American president who, in an act of remarkable audacity, appears to have recruited foreign allies to join in attacking his political rivals at home. This is profoundly…
This is the Bibi-Trump moment. The recent Israeli elections not only reinforced Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ironclad grip on his country’s political life, but affirmed the mutual benefits of the bromance between these two pillars of the global movement of illiberal democrats. Netanyahu’s pro-settlement agenda pumps up President Trump’s evangelical base; and Trump bestows…
During a recent visit to Paris, I had a remarkable encounter that affirmed my faith in humanity. At a dinner party hosted by dear friends Annie Cohen-Solal and Marc Mézard, my wife and I met two extraordinary octogenarians whom Le Monde calls “les jumeaux de l’Islam,” the twins of Islam.) Adel Rifaat and Bahgat Elnadi…
Appearances can deceive. One year ago, on July 1, 2017, I started a new job as President and CEO of the Center for Jewish History (CJH) in New York. A mere two months into the job, in early September, I began receiving a torrent of threatening emails from P.R. executive Ronn Torossian, memorably described by…
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