Archives: Perspectives
The Harvard Lazy
Two months ago, The Harvard Crimson, the daily student newspaper of the Ivy League university, published an editorial endorsing the BDS movement. The pompous text, busting with sophomoric self-importance and self-entitlement, did not send the shock waves its anonymous authors may have wished for. It is still worthy of treatment. Reading it made me gravely concerned about the future of a great nation, and it is not Israel....
United We Stand
The question of how to respond to liberal movements in Judaism preoccupied Orthodox Jews in Europe throughout the nineteenth century. The conundrum continued to be a topic of lively debate through the twentieth century in the United States, and then migrated to Israel....
On an Optimistic Note
Last month I attended a “Prayer for Peace” at “Our Lady of Arabia” Cathedral near Manama, Bahrain. The event was held under the patronage of King Hamad. A majority of the hundreds present were migrant workers from the subcontinent. ...
Putin, Enemy of the People
If only I had a dime for every time I recently came across the line, “contrary to what Francis Fukuyama wrote in 1989….” The Japanese-American Fukuyama prophesied the “end of history” in an article ...
The Unthinkable
According to an opinion poll conducted in June 2021 by YouGov and Bright Line Watch, a think tank of political scientists who fear for the future of American democracy, no less than 37% of Americans...
Online Hatred
Antisemitism propagates on the internet because the unrestrained flow of information provides easy access to sites, discussion groups, or even individual posts that spread hatred. In a world where the boundaries between the digital space and real life...
Antiochus, Santa and My Son
Driving through Tel Aviv on a cool December day in 2018, my then almost-three-year-old son gave us his take on Hanukkah and Christmas. Asked about Antiochus, he replied that Antiochus killed the Jews and hated them. Shifting gears, my wife asked...
A Stunning Decision
In late October this year, Greece’s supreme court decided to ban kosher (and halal) butchering. The decision, criticized by Jewish organizations in harsh language, relied on a much anticipated ruling given by the European Court of Justice in December...
Home Cantor
As a young boy, I used to gaze at the Stars of David that adorn the ceiling of the synagogue. I can still smell the same scent of the room and can almost imagine holding my grandfather’s hand, a hand I haven’t held for almost thirty years, full of expectations...
A Royal Message
On October 13 of this year, a well-attended conference was held in Malmö, Sweden, entitled “The Malmö International Forum on Holocaust Remembrance and Combating Antisemitism – Remember-ReAct.” The first question that comes...