Not all hatreds are equal Bigotry in the U.S. is steadily declining against most minorities but drastically increasing against Jews. There’s no doubt that antisemitism is increasing in the United States while prejudice and hate crimes against other minorities are generally on the decline. This trend is reflected by US law enforcement statistics, but is […]
It remains an article of faith among western progressives that a Palestinian state will bring about Mideast peace; and some pundits wasted little time citing the recent murders of seven Israelis as proof (and by implication mitigating the culpability of the terrorists who killed them). But the two-state paradigm is based on the false assumptions that […]
There are multiple words for “enemy” in Hebrew, but two of the more intriguing ones in Tanakh are oyev (אוֹיֵב) and soneh (שׂוֹנֵא), each of which conveys a distinctive meaning and linguistic nuance. According to Rav Eliyahu ben Shlomo Zalman, the great eighteenth-century Torah sage known as the Vilna Gaon (or HaGra), an oyev seeks to cause physical or bodily harm, […]
Listen, Palestinian Arabs, If you want to march, march on Jordan. The “Jordan-is-Palestine” option for resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict is an idea that, despite history and logic, was beaten into silence by Israel’s enemies and detractors. Critics denounced the concept as preposterous, reactionary and counterproductive. And yet, the idea has been resurrected from within Jordan […]
Progressive critics, take note: the U.S. system at its core is not a pure democracy at all, but a constitutional republic. Before the dust settled and all votes were counted, the American liberal establishment began lamenting the death of Israeli democracy as Benyamin Netanyahu was poised to form the next government with a commanding number […]
They believed in both their history and destiny as Jews. Loss of personal and collective Jewish identity in the USA pained them. As the war in Ukraine drags on longer than anyone thought possible, it seems Jewish history has become one of the unintended casualties. Though warfare against civilians should always be condemned, the willingness […]
Non-Orthodox rabbis embrace the progressive ideals of their Christian counterparts, using modern terms for an ancient hatred. In an outrageous display of moral vacancy, the Presbyterian Church (USA) recently labelled Israel an apartheid state – despite an abundance of evidence and legal precedent to the contrary. Though mainline protestant churches have grown increasingly hostile toward […]
There’s an apocryphal story about Leyzer Zamenhof, the inventor of Esperanto – an artificial language created with the utopian aim of promoting global harmony through linguistic uniformity. As the story goes, Zamenhof gave the opening address at the first international conference of Esperanto speakers and, wishing to welcome his audience as warmly as possible, he […]
Ignorance may not be antisemitic, but crafty denial of history is, as is skewing Jewish values to bolster up false claims. How effectively is the Jewish establishment confronting intolerance? In a recent editorial, Morton Klein and Elizabeth Berney of the Zionist Organization of America criticized the ADL’s latest report on radical violence, “Murder and Extremism […]
Jewish identity is religious, but also ethnic and bespeaks national existence going back thousands of years- all reasons for hatred. Current law enforcement statistics show that Jews are targets of bias and hate crimes more than any other minority group, and these numbers are consistent with increases in violent antisemitism seen worldwide. The one constant […]
Judaism has to be authentic, with values my father held dear, innately and organically Jewish, not progressive attempts to ‘pass’. There’s a crisis in American Jewish leadership and it involves the misuse of communal authority to sanction dogmatic politics. As reported in the Jewish media in December, a scheduled speaking engagement by Professor Alan Dershowitz […]
The decline of American journalism has been realized by reporters and editors acting as partisan foot soldiers instead of watchdogs. This is not the free press envisioned by the Founding Fathers or taught by my journalism mentor. Media collusion has always been essential for enabling authoritarian government and dictatorial rule. Historically, state-run media systems have […]
The humanitarian impulse was so ingrained over the generations that Jews became known for donating more than any other group. The commandments regarding charity are set forth in the Torah and elucidated in the Talmud. In Tractate Baba Batra (9b), Rav Yitzhak said: “Anyone who gives a coin to a poor person receives six blessings, […]
The Jewish concept of righteousness cannot be molded to fit a preoccupation with “social justice” that threatens the Jewish future. The concept of the “Righteous Gentile” is originally rooted in the Torah’s recognition that members of other nations can serve the G-d of Israel by accepting and faithfully observing the Noahide Commandments. Known as “Gerei […]
Eerily, the hatred of French Jews during the Dreyfus Affair foreshadowed the antisemitic slogans that now fill the American landscape. Though hate-crimes against Jews appeared to spike during the recent Gaza hostilities, the escalation was actually part of an antisemitic trend that began more than a decade ago and steadily worsened with the complicity of […]