This article was first published in The Forward on May 21, 1999. The terrain reminded me of the Negev, especially as I gazed out over it from high above the desert floor: coarse sand, prickly shrubs, sandstone cliffs. A rope was the only thing that protected me from injury or death. I was leading a…
In a recent analysis of U.S. religious groups, the Pew Research Center reported that the most educated American Jews are also the least religious. In considering these findings, it’s tempting to think that secular education leads to assimilation among American Jews (I want to be clear that Pew, a leading source of data on contemporary…
Dear friends posting social media screeds against Trump, This is my challenge to channel your anger, energy and intelligence into constructive actions that will actually make a difference. I understand that the election of Donald Trump represents a nightmare, and we’re trying to wake up from it. But angry posts, signs, and marches are the…
Paul Traynor’s documentary “New Trier: The Tip of the Spear” explains in deep detail all the elements of a seemingly local controversy that flared up last February at New Trier High School, a nationally distinguished public school in suburban Chicago’s heavily Jewish North Shore. If the film is to be believed, the angry dispute that…
Students at New Trier High School were pleased and excited when Andrew Aydin, a close associate of civil rights icon and Democratic Congress member John Lewis, agreed to speak at their school on civil rights; even more so when Colson Whitehead, the widely lauded author of the best-selling novel, “The Underground Railroad,” agreed to join…
Do Jews get a discount when they buy a car? Do they own McDonald’s? Do Jews control the media and international banking? Do any of them live here anymore? These are among the questions German schoolchildren ask Jews who volunteer in a new outreach program with the provocative name “Rent A Jew.” The Jews in…
What’s good for America is good for its Jews. That’s the common and rosy assumption, anyhow. American economic progress lifts Jewish boats, too. America’s embrace of diversity legitimates everyone’s particular story. And even if Jews have appeared to act against their narrow interests — displaying the tendency to “earn like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto…
Ten years ago, when we applied for permission to establish the city’s in Brooklyn’s District 22, representatives from the Department of Education questioned us about who exactly would patronize our proposed school. The DOE worried that only Jewish families would send their children to a school in which Modern Hebrew (instead of Spanish or Mandarin…
דער ווידעאָ איז טשיקאַווע סײַ פֿאַרן אינהאַלט סײַ פֿאַר קאַסאָווס נאַטירלעכן ליטוויש־ייִדיש
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