Albert Einstein once said that there are only two things that might be infinite: the universe and human stupidity. And, he confessed, he wasn’t sure about the universe. When we hear that, we chuckle. Or at least we smile. We do not take offense. The reason is that the name “Einstein” conjures an image of…
Is any name more synonymous with Jewish genius than Albert Einstein? By speaking out against anti-Semitism and lending his brand to institutions like the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Einstein became a standard-bearer for the Diaspora. As a prominent booster of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a star fundraiser for the Zionist cause, he…
A bit taller than average height. A thin figure. Not too skinny. Not rail thin. A gentle one. A thoughtful face wrinkled from thinking and an artistic sensibility. A pair of deep blue eyes. A silvery moustache and wavy black-and-white silk hair covering a large expansive forehead — that’s what Professor Einstein looks like. He…
When Albert Einstein visited British Mandate Palestine in 1921, he was impressed by Jewish enterprise in construction and agriculture. But he had harsh words for ultra-Orthodox Jews he spotted praying at the Western Wall, calling them “dull-witted clansmen of our tribe.” Sixty years after Einstein’s death, the German physicist could have never predicted that an…
October 27, 1946 Princeton, New Jersey, is a town of 8,000 residents currently celebrating, along with the entire world, the 200th birthday of its famous university. Woodrow Wilson, tragic dreamer of the first League of Nations, was president of Princeton University prior to becoming president of the United States. Today another dreamer lives there. On…
Pamela Geller is the flamboyant and unfiltered representative for the anti-Muslim far-right on the Internet. Her organization, the American Freedom Defense Initiative, has mounted legal campaigns to force public buses across the country to run her advertisements, including one claiming “Islamic Jew-hatred: It’s in the Quran,” and urging an end to “all aid to Islamic…
Poland’s B’nai Brith has denounced the burning of a Jew in effigy during an anti-refugee rally. The anti-Semitic act followed tirades against Muslim refugees at a rally in Wroclaw, a major city in southwest Poland. “Raped, beaten and murdered by the Islamic savages,” the Polish nationalists shouted in the market square this week. “Do you…
A spy drama that lasted three decades, sowed suspicion between two allies, and that sent a Jewish American behind bars for half his life, ended unceremoniously Friday with the opening of a door in the middle of a dark night in North Carolina. Jonathan Pollard, the Navy intelligence analyst who stole American defense secrets and…
(JTA) — Conservative Judaism is at a crossroads. The movement is committed to Jewish tradition, but it’s seeing a growing number of its young people walk out the door — most often to Reform Judaism. American Jews who self-identify as Conservative increasingly are leading lives at odds with the core values and rules of Conservative…
(JTA) — Once the music started playing — not the “Hava Nagila” tune that made her the Jewish poster child of the London Games, but something equally folksy — Aly Raisman tumbled right out of bounds. On her first bit of gymnastics at her comeback World Championships here last month, she had quickly incurred a…
Ezra Schwartz was just 18 years old when he was killed this Thursday in a shooting attack in the West Bank. Originally from Sharon, Massachusetts, the teen was in Israel for a gap year. He was spending his time studying at at the “Ashreinu” Yeshiva in Beit Shemesh and volunteering. When the terror attack happened,…
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