The word “Israel” has been interpreted to mean “a struggle with God,” but 60 years of Israel as a Jewish nation has shown a country in perpetual struggle. As well as wars with its neighbors, Israel has grappled with its history and identity, and the implications of each for the other. Though not explicitly addressed,…
I intended to write about an Israel too often overlooked. I wanted a feel-good story for a change, a story that did not include the word “however.” And I had, so I thought, exactly such a story, the truly inspiring story of a 30 year-old man — we’ll call him Hamza — with whom I…
A rabbi in North Carolina is letting people know — in a big way — about the biblical injunction to welcome the stranger. Rabbi Eric Solomon of Beth Meyer Synagogue in Raleigh is a member of a Uniting N.C., an interfaith coalition that has put up billboards in support of immigrants. “Once they’re here, the…
When members of New York City’s West End Synagogue were recently disinvited at the 11th hour from a long-anticipated Friday gathering with Muslims at Harlem’s Masjid Aqsa, some involved in organizing the meeting feared that hard-line mosque members were behind the cancelation. But at the synagogue the next morning, the mosque’s imam, Souleimane Konate, showed…
If Martin Luther King Jr. and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel were alive today, they would surely be standing arm in arm, condemning Alabama?s new anti-immigrant law. Under Alabama?s new law, House Bill 56, local law enforcement officers are required to obtain proof of legal status from anyone whom they stop and ?suspect? is in the…
In the five years leading up to the deal freeing Gilad Shalit, the Israeli nation adopted his family as its own, sharing its pain and campaigning for its cause. Meanwhile, the family of Pavel Slotzker was all but forgotten. Shalit’s comrade, Slotzker was a victim of the same cross-border raid in which militants abducted Shalit,…
The long arm of the law caught up with a lawyer who goes by the moniker “Rabbi Avraham David” in Canada yesterday. The attorney, whose real name is Earl Seth David, was arrested in Toronto and will be extradited to the U.S. to face charges for his actions as the alleged ringleader of a massive…
The Archaeology of Home: An Epic Set On A Thousand Square Feet of The Lower East Side By Katharine Greider Public Affairs, 352 pages, $27 By the beginning of the 20th century, the Lower East Side of Manhattan was the most crowded neighborhood on earth, more densely populated than Calcutta. At the Tenement Museum on…
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