Category Archives: Jewish Identity

When I first read Rabbi Manis Friedman’s published words in Moment Magazine addressing the question, “How should Jews treat their Arab neighbors?” I quickly deleted the e-mail.   He wrote, “I don’t believe in Western morality, i.e. don’t kill civilians or children, don’t destroy holy sites, don’t fight during holiday seasons, don’t bomb cemeteries, don’t shoot until they shoot first because it is immoral.  The only way to fight a …

“You shall be called the city of righteousness, the faithful city.  Zion shall be redeemed with justice.”  Isaiah I: 26-27  Zionism involves the belief that Israel has a right to exist as a democratic Jewish state. It is the national liberation movement of the Jewish people. Zionism, like any form of nationalism, has found expression on the left, right and center of the political spectrum. All Zionists share the common denominator of commitment to the existence and flourishing of a …

On too many Rosh Hashanah visits to the synagogue of my choice I had chafed at having to go through it on two days as though the first was a dress rehearsal. Who besides God needs so much adulation? I finally figured out that the reason for the annual encore is to goad worshippers to consider what and why they are doing something twice. To paraphrase Socrates: the unexamined ceremony is not worth celebrating. And this in turn has led me to ask myself: how many New Year celebrations do a people …

By the time of his death at age 64, Ehud Manor and the thousand songs he wrote were clearly the embodiment of a beautiful Israel. His songs were the concrete representation of an otherwise nebulous concept: Ein li eretz acheret, I have no other country – all the buoyant pride, lacerating pain, disappointments and no holds barred criticism. Like Naomi Shemer, the songster laureate of our homeland, nothing Israeli was foreign to him or to his lyrics. Like her, Manor was awarded the Israel …

As we sit at the Seder table this year and hear the voice of the young ones singing Ma Nishtana: Why is this night different from all the other nights? we may not be aware that our minds also wander to the concealed “twin question” of Ma Nishtana: How is this Seder similar to all the other Seders? Our memories roam through the different Sedarim that constitute our Jewish biographies: Seders that we have celebrated at different locations, with different people: family, friends or …

Once when Zionism was still just a movement with the goal of establishing a Jewish State in Palestine, democracy, ideology and politics were not mutually exclusive. Although this philosophy called for Jewish self-emancipation, Herzl was also personally entranced with diplomacy and diplomatic negotiations. Still, he was committed to achieving the goal by empowering the will of the people through western enlightened means. Democracy was to be the name of the game. Little did he realize that the …

It was December 1984 and I was lounging around in my “double” dira (apartment) at the World Union of Jewish Students compound, an absorption center housing over a hundred of us post-college Jews who were doing what is now called a “gap year” experience in Israel. I heard a knock on the door.  It was Koby, the head of WUJS, coming to tell me I needed to vacate my apartment immediately and move to a quad.  My response: “You could have given me some notice – like …