“Do your little bit of good where you are; It’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.” Desmond Tutu. By MARILYN SHAPIRO This morning, as I have done almost every Monday morning for the past four years, I mailed out a small stack of postcards. Just call it my very small attempt to do little bits […]

By DROR EYDAR (Israel Hayom via JNS) – Historical memory is not a matter for annoying arguments about minutiae, it’s an issue of national security. We remember, therefore we are. “By the rivers of Babylon,” a Jewish exile wrote in Psalms after the destruction of the First Temple, “there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion” (Psalms 137:1). […]

By DEBORAH FINEBLUM (JNS) – Memory and imagination: The two keys that unlock the Jewish holiday of Tisha B’Av. In fact Tisha B’Av, a holiday many Jews seem unfamiliar with, is all about memory, the collective memory of the Jewish people, as much a family as it is a religion. But to tap into the Jewish collective memory bank, we […]

By ANDREW SILOW-CARROLL, LAURA E. ADKINS NEW YORK CITY (JTA) – The Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s editor in chief, Andrew Silow-Carroll, and its opinion editor, Laura E. Adkins, shared their thoughts on a recent New York Times article answering “some of the most difficult questions” about BDS, or the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel. Andrew Silow-Carroll: Hey Laura, I wonder what […]

By Rabbi SHMULY YANKLOWITZ PHOENIX (JTA) – Israeli Education Minister Rafi Peretz’s recent tone-deaf declaration that intermarriage is akin to a “second Holocaust” was shocking and shameful, and desecrates the memories of those who perished in the Holocaust. While Peretz leads the Jewish Home party as well as the United Right coalition, and is known for a Kahanist ideology, we […]

By DAVID SUISSA (Jewish Journal via JNS) – We take it for granted that the way to address the evil of anti-Semitism is to fight it. It’s a natural part of our vocabulary. We fight, we confront, we condemn, we call out. We refuse to stand idly by. All of that makes perfect sense. But on this 25th anniversary of […]

By BEN SALES NEW YORK CITY (JTA) – Eric Fingerhut believes in the “big tent.” But is the tent collapsing? For six tumultuous years, he has served as the president of Hillel International, the umbrella group for more than 500 Jewish centers on college campuses across the country. He is leaving that position on July 1 to become the president […]

Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger, “Second Thought: a US-Israel initiative” June 13, 2019 US Ambassador David Friedman’s June 8 interview in the NY Times was inconsistent with the worldview of the State Department establishment, but quite consistent with Middle East reality and US national security interests. Ambassador Friedman stated: “The absolute last thing the world needs is a failed Palestinian state […]

Rabbi DANIEL LANDES JERUSALEM (JTA) – The Jewish Telegraphic Agency recently reported that I would be ordaining a gay Orthodox rabbinical student who was denied the opportunity to receive smicha from his own Orthodox yeshiva.  I have now done so, ordaining Rabbi Daniel Atwood during a ceremony attended by more than 200 guests. I have been an Orthodox rabbi for a […]

Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger, “Second Thought: a US-Israel Initiative” May 6, 2019, https://bit.ly/2Z91TNN More on Jewish holidays: http://bit.ly/137Er6J Shavou’ot and the roots of the special US attitude toward Israel: *The holiday of Shavou’ot (Pentecost) – which commemorates the receipt of the Torah (the Five Books of Moses) and the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai some 3,500 years ago – sheds […]