A floating circus

I got an email from my adoring mother earlier today urging me to write a piece for the Jerusalem Post or the New York Times or SOME newspaper, putting the latest Middle East circus—in this case, the Gaza-bound “freedom flotilla”—into perspective. While I’m touched at her confidence in my erudition, and the fact that she [...]

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Christopher Hitchens on anti-Semitism

Some months ago I posted on my thoughts about the origins of anti-Semitism.  Since then, though, in conversation with others and my own thinking, I have reached the conclusion that modern anti-Semitism is much broader-based.  Where once it was spawned by fanatical Christians and Muslims, nowadays it’s embraced by secular people.  Where it was once [...]

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Guest post: Hair: Not the musical

The following is a guest post by my friend, B., another Orthodox convert who lives in the US and recently stopped covering her hair.  It’s something with which I’ve grappled for much of my married life, both in the US and in Israel (and posted on here).  But I asked B. to let me post [...]

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Integration, Israeli-style, in 2010 (or, welcoming haredi Jews into the rest of society)

I usually look at the State of Israel as a modern wonder, something that in the history of humankind is unprecedented.  And other times, I look at Israel and find myself deeply disappointed by its failure to live up to its considerable potential. There are lots of reasons for Israel’s many failings.  Widespread government corruption [...]

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Book review: Abba Eban’s My People: The Story of the Jews

Jewish histories seem to have a theme to them.  I remember reading Solomon Grayzel’s History of the Jews and his beautiful introduction in which he states clearly his thesis, that whenever a door was closed on the Jews somewhere in the world, another was opened. Abba Eban too has a theme in My People—that no [...]

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Conspicuous consumption

A few months ago, the Cap’n and I were sitting and talking to friends on a Shabbat afternoon.  We and they had mutual acquaintances, a young family in a well-to-do coastal city in Israel, where the husband/father is a successful businessman with a palatial house, company car, and a nanny for the children. We were [...]

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A mosque at Ground Zero

I read a recent op-ed by Rav Shmuely Boteach in which he shares his thoughts regarding the proposed plans to build a $100 million, 13-story Islamic cultural center and mosque near Ground Zero in New York City.  Not surprisingly, the families of the dead from the mass murder of 9/11 are displeased. Ever an optimist, [...]

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The Jane Austen (video) companion

I’ve been a devoted Jane Austen fan since I was 13, when the BBC aired its version of “Pride and Prejudice” on Masterpiece Theatre.  Since then, I have read most of her novels, and seen at least one dramatized form of each of them.  My favorite of her novels (which for me means the one [...]

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Kosher Cooking Carnival: Dairy, Meat OR Pareve

The Kosher Cooking Carnival for the month of Sivan (and in advance of Shavuot) is up at Leora’s blog.  Bon appetit!

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Some of my questions about the Arabs answered… Part IV

This is the final post in a series of four in which I pose a question I’ve had about Arab culture and the Arab world for some time, and the information I was able to glean from Raphael Patai’s The Arab Mind, which I finished reading recently. What challenges must the Arab world overcome to [...]

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Some of my questions about the Arabs answered… Part III

This is part III in a series of four.  Each post contains a question I’ve had about Arab culture and the Arab world for some time, and the information I was able to glean from Raphael Patai’s The Arab Mind, which I finished reading recently. Why can’t we in the West resolve our differences with [...]

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Some of my questions about the Arabs answered… Part II

This is part II in a series of four.  Each post contains a question I’ve had about Arab culture and the Arab world for some time, and the information I was able to glean from Raphael Patai’s The Arab Mind, which I finished reading recently. Why does the Arab world nourish such an obsessive hatred [...]

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Some of my questions about the Arabs answered… Part I

I recently finished a book entitled The Arab Mind by Raphael Patai.  Originally published in 1976, it was revised in 1983, and re-published in 2002 (after the terrorist assault on the United States on 11 September 2001).  The book includes a valuable foreward by Norvell B. DeAtkine, a retired US Army colonel who possesses a [...]

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An interview

Ilana-Davita kindly requested to interview me as part of a series she is featuring on her blog.  Check it out at Ilana-Davita.

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O Cap’n, my Cap’n

As of the 5th of Iyar (or May 10 on the secular calendar), the Cap’n and I have been married 10 years.  Through boom economy and unemployment, health and sickness, four kids, aliyah, and a year when the only time we were ever alone together was when we’d hire a babysitter on Sunday nights (our [...]

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A plague on both their houses

I’ve been following the news about Obama and his plans for the Middle East for months.  With every passing week, I get more and more discouraged. I was a good Massachusetts voter for years (read: loyal Democrat), and before that, a true Oregonian (also usually a Democrat).  I preferred the tax-and-spend mentality to the spend-and-let-the-next-guy-worry-about-how-to-pay-for-it [...]

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90th anniversary of San Remo Conference

April 24-25 of this year was the 90th anniversary of the San Remo Conference which took place in 1920 and established the right of the Jews of Israel to settle (hear that? SETTLE) anywhere in the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. A statement issued following the commemoration ceremony included the following [...]

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