Leonard Fein
By Leonard Fein
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Opinion Arrival of the ‘New American Haggadah’
‘Here I am, prepared and ardent [as in hineni muchan umzuman], allied and present, ready to perform the mitzvah of the first cup, the enactment of salvation’s promise…. You are blessed, Lord God-of-us, King of the Cosmos [eloheinu melech ha’olam], Maker of the fruit of the vine.” That is what Nathan Englander’s fresh, inventive, liberal…
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Opinion Judge’s Silent Protest of Israeli Racism
The scandal took place at the home of Israel’s president, where members of the nation’s leading legal and political echelon had gathered to pay tribute to the retiring president of the Supreme Court and to welcome her successor to that august office. Among those present were the other justices of the Court, including Justice Salim…
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Opinion Despite Bile, Newt Insists He’s ‘Cheerful’
I’m stuck. The world is wobbling from crisis to crisis — think Iran, think Greece, think Syria, think a dozen and more other centers of misery, red meat for carnivorous columnists, but I am stuck. I cannot get beyond one word. It is the word that Newt Gingrich used the other night, in the last…
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Opinion What About Israel’s Atomic Weapons?
Israel’s best kept secret is not of the “maybe yes, maybe no” variety. In fact it is a “yes” so definitive that it has 162 million Google entries. Honest. That’s what Google’s response is when you type in “Israel’s nuclear policy” — books, articles, essays, arguments, all blithely recognizing that Israel has nuclear arms. Yet…
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Opinion Cultural Divide on Display at CPAC
Never before have I felt more keenly the cultural divide, a divide that goes well beyond its most obvious current expression in the realm of politics (although that realm is, here, my principal focus). During the speeches at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference, the signal annual meeting of American conservatives, I was especially interested…
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Opinion Building Barriers to Two-State Solution
Here’s a “sign of the times” factoid: In recent commentary on Israel’s settlement policy, the number of Jewish settlers beyond the Green Line has ballooned to 600,000 from 350,000 or so. It is as if there had suddenly been a mass immigration to the West Bank. But there has been no such immigration. What there…
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Opinion Poverty in America: A Crisis Ignored
Poor Jews, the saying goes, are middle-class Jews without money. The unstated assumption is that the conventional cultural standards of the middle class are not displaced by a “culture of poverty” when Jews tumble down the class ladder. It is, however, important to remember that some Jews — estimates vary, but a reasonable guess is…
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Opinion Echoes of U.S. Racism in Israel
An easy case followed by a harder case: At the beginning January, Israel’s Channel 2 reported that it had encountered in the town of Kiryat Malachi what used to be called here in the United States a “restrictive covenant.” Such a covenant is a legal device that enables the seller (or renter) of real estate…
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