David N. Myers teaches Jewish history at UCLA.
David N. Myers
By David N. Myers
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Opinion What the current crisis shows about Haredi leadership and politics
The protests against COVID-19 restrictions by Haredi Jews in Brooklyn last week, which included burning masks and an attack on a Haredi journalist, were shocking. They seemed to represent a blatant defiance of public-health norms and plain old common sense. And they mark a new stage in the evolution of the Haredi community in the…
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News Remembering Professor Ruth Gavison, scholar, activist, and friend
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…
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News Remembering Steven M. Lowenstein, prominent Jewish historian
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…
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Opinion Climate change, inequality, anti-Semitism, occupation: Corona is a chance for a reset
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…
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Opinion Coronavirus is no excuse to demonize Haredim
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…
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Opinion Dear Jewish Supporters of Donald Trump: What More Evidence Do You Need?
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…
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Opinion Israel Will Be Liberal Again, One Day.
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…
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Culture The Path to Enlightenment: Muslims, Brothers, Jews
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…
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