Leonard Fein
By Leonard Fein
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Opinion A Time for Candor
“Civility” is all the rage these days, but civility isn’t everything; there’s also candor. Nor should anemia be the price of civility; leave room for passion. On June 29, readers of JTA were presented with an opinion piece by two ex-officio leaders of American Jewry: Lee Rosenberg, president of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee,…
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Opinion The Manipulative March
A friend called to tell me, with pride in his voice, that his 16-year-old son had been accepted to a very special “Israel program” — three weeks of intensive touring, some social action work, lectures, whatnot. But first, “They start in Prague, and then Krakow and Auschwitz.” There is a tradition that dates back to…
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Opinion Obama at 18 Months
Messiahs come, messiahs go. Sometimes they are self-proclaimed, sometimes they are the collective fantasy of others. The longing for a messiah is, one way or another, a universal: Why not imagine the arrival of one, of The One, who will finally bring peace, justice, forgiveness and all manner of good thing to humankind? Indeed, how…
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Opinion Reading Between the Criticisms
What’s wrong with the following assertions? • Israel is a wholly legitimate state, long-established and internationally recognized. It is not going away, nor should it. The United States was not “illegitimate” back when its laws and its customs were racist, nor even when slavery was legally sanctioned. Like its policies or not, Israel’s legitimacy is…
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Opinion The Sieges of Gaza
Siege 1: Israeli sources are in perfect accord: The flotilla was a provocation, intended less to bring humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza, more to break Israel’s siege. The people on board the vessels made no effort to disguise their intentions. Accordingly, Israel knew in advance that it would be faced with a more…
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Opinion Chosenness and Its Discontents
The first line is familiar. I’ve added the rest: How odd of God to choose the Jews. But how on earth could we refuse? Was the choice reciprocal? Fact eternal or just cyclical? Was it mystical, statistical, poetical, umbilical? The consequence let us confess Is no small measure of distress. We stand accused, we are…
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Opinion What To Do With Bar Mitzvah Crashers
We evidently need a new system. I am referring to the traditional method for deciding who shall be invited to attend a bar or bat mitzvah. In olden times, when nature and nurture combined to indicate the ripeness of the child, the invitation list almost composed itself: family, friends, perhaps colleagues. But, as the saying…
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Opinion Shouting but Not Hearing
Yoram Tehar Lev, a songwriter from Kibbutz Yagur, tells the story of a rabbi who was hired by an old-line congregation. Upon arriving, he was mystified: During the recitation of the Sh’ma, half the worshippers stood while the other half remained seated. Those who were standing would shout to those who were sitting, “You are…
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