In an op-ed last week in these pages, Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove argued that American Jews focus on Israel as a coping mechanism to distract us from “the endangered condition of our Judaism” caused by assimilation and intermarriage. If we could only allocate our resources to Jewish education and communal institutions and away from the constant…
The great Jewish debates of the 1950s and 1960s revolved around whether the Bible was or was not divine. It wasn’t a new conversation for Jews, but it took on new meaning in the wake of the Holocaust. We weren’t just arguing over whether God wrote the Bible, but over whether God was in Auschwitz,…
Last month, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez declared that American aid to Israel is “something that can be discussed” in Washington. Her comments made news precisely because America’s policy of giving Israel billions in aid without expecting any policy changes in return hasn’t actually been discussed — or at least questioned — in either party in more…
Over the past few years, Birthright, the ten-day Jewish roots trip to Israel, has taken something of a beating. Activist groups like If Not Now and J Street U have made a habit of attacking the trip, which has become something of a sacred cow in the Jewish community; these attacks include campaigns criticizing Birthright’s…
The historian Pamela Nadell made a fascinating point in an opinion piece in last week’s Washington Post: By focusing on the Holocaust, she argues, Americans have overlooked centuries of anti-Semitism on our own shores. “This focus on the Holocaust gets Americans off the hook. Anti-Semitism is something that happened over there, in Europe — an…
On Tuesday, President Trump addressed the nation with his second State Of The Union address. His supporters loved the speech. His detractors hated it. Nancy Pelosi’s sarcastic-seeming clap became a gif. #waybackwednesday – oh yes that clap took me back to the teen years. She knows. And she knows that you know. And frankly she’s…
As a French Jew, I am often asked about anti-Semitism in France. Without fail, the last question at any appearance I make is the same: Should French Jews leave and move to Israel or America? I always insist that Jews have played an instrumental role in founding modern-day France, and if anyone is going to…
Most American Jews have always believed America to be special among diaspora countries, fundamentally unlike Europe or the Middle East, where Jews lived for centuries before our grandparents and great-grandparents were forced to flee for their lives. That was before the Pittsburgh shooting that left 11 Jews dead. Now, against a backdrop of increasingly emboldened…
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