Sunday July 12, 2020 | 20 Tammuz 5780
The words “I can‘t breathe” will never again have a simple meaning in our country. For many of us, regardless of race, those words will symbolize something far different. They are symptomatic of a pandemic that has taken – not just the more than 100,000 lives claimed by COVID-19, but a pandemic that has […]
You cannot crush the life out of someone on Minnesota pavement like it’s nothing. This is not justice. A person of color, approached by an officer, should not have to feel fear, a fear I can only imagine, due to my privilege. Put another way, a police officer’s patience must not be determined by […]
Once again, racism has come to the fore in society. Not that it has ever come close to going away, but progress was made after the turbulent 1960s, such as in an upward social mobility of many African American people and the elections of President Obama. However, many were left behind and still subject to […]
There is a lot being said about antisemitism these days. So much, maybe, that everything that there is to say has been said. Even so, I would like to share some of my thoughts on this subject and what we can do about it. Antisemitism seems to have been around ever since the days of […]
Did you know that there have been more than 551 deaths due to gun-related violence so far in the United States this year? The digital Gun Violence Archive has recorded many deaths, and there had only been 36 days of 2020 when I did my research. The percentage of gun-related deaths in the U.S. is […]
Gabriel García Márquez’s “Love in the Time of Cholera” has been on my mind this past week. Set in South America (some say Colombia) near the turn of the 20th century, the novel concerns a series of fraught relationships between its protagonists, one of whom is a doctor who aims to eradicate the disease. While […]
Dear Friends: If it seems strange that I feel like the luckiest human being on earth in the midst of a pandemic, well, color me strange, and a little conflicted. But at some level, this feels like a moment for which I’ve been preparing my whole life. There are reasons for this, reasons I wouldn’t […]
These past months have been rife with political drama – here in the United States and in Israel. I am writing this in early February so don’t know what has happened in recent weeks, but I cannot imagine they have been any less drama-filled thanks to ongoing Democratic primaries, yet another Israeli election, and […]
The most influential Jew is Moses. This, according to “The Jewish 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Jews of All Time.” If we were to update this 1994 book by Michael Shapiro for 2020, would we have new entries? After thousands of years of civilization, can modern culture truly produce a few more […]
This is in response to Jim Beer’s opinion piece in the December 2019 Chronicle, “Donald Trump, Philo-Semite: Our president has an interest in and a respect for the Jewish people.” There were a number of issues brought up by the article. I will discuss them one by one: 1. The great majority of Democrats […]
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