A Boone for Israel
West Bank settler journalist David Bedein was in Washington last week for a major gathering of pro-Israel evangelical Christians.
During the event, sponsored by Christians United for Israel, he bumped into 1950s crooner Pat Boone. Bedein proudly recalled how his seventh grade class at Akiba Hebrew Academy, a Philadelphia-area Jewish day school, had translated Boone’s theme song to the movie “Exodus” — “This land is mine, God gave this land to me.… If I must fight, I’ll fight to make this land our own. Until I die, this land is mine” — into Hebrew. “He immediately burst out in tears,” Bedein wrote in an e-mail. “I then asked him to sing the song, which he did.”
"Why I became the Forward’s Editor-in-Chief"
You are surely a friend of the Forward if you’re reading this. And so it’s with excitement and awe — of all that the Forward is, was, and will be — that I introduce myself to you as the Forward’s newest editor-in-chief.
And what a time to step into the leadership of this storied Jewish institution! For 129 years, the Forward has shaped and told the American Jewish story. I’m stepping in at an intense time for Jews the world over. We urgently need the Forward’s courageous, unflinching journalism — not only as a source of reliable information, but to provide inspiration, healing and hope.
