People & Places

Jews against Zionism

It will come as a surprise to many that the current adamant Palestinian refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state was once American policy. An even greater surprise is that an American rabbi and the Jewish organization he headed played a major role in the government's articulation of that policy.

The Jewish Samuel Menashe

The poet Samuel Menashe, who died on August 22 at the age of eighty-five, grew up in Queens, New York. His poems have always been appreciated by other poets; but, until late in his life, his poetry did not receive the attention it deserved.

Demonizing Glenn Beck

Few American public figures equal Glenn Beck in his ability to inspire loathing from his enemies and affection from his admirers.  Beck was in Israel this past week for a series of public events—in effect, revival meetings. He called the tour "Restoring Courage."

Hidden Master

The saddest saga in Jewish literary history involves some 500 Soviet Yiddish artists who were stolen away by Stalin's henchmen in the late 1940's. They met a tragic fate after twenty years under a relentlessly repressive regime whose creation they had greeted with utopian fervor.

Who Speaks for Israeli Arabs?

Historians writing about Israel's 1948 fight for independence generally place heavy responsibility for the Palestinian Arab refugee problem on the Arab leaders who urged their people to flee Palestine temporarily until the Zionists were driven into the sea.

Too Many Museums?

Although the paint is still wet on Philadelphia's National Museum of American Jewish History, an announcement has just been made of a planned National Museum of the Jewish People in Washington, D.C., steps from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and not far from two other Jewish museums.

Get Ready for Durban III

On September 22, one month from today, world bodies will gather at the UN General Assembly in New York on the 10th anniversary of the UN World Conference against Racism in Durban, South Africa.

Islamism and Western Art

Osama bin Laden will forever be remembered spending his last days like a common shlub: sitting on the floor, wrapped in a blanket, remote control in hand, watching TV. Unlike most other shlubs, however, bin Laden just happened to be contemplating his own image on the boob tube.  

Crown Heights in the Mirror

On the evening of August 19, 1991, the three-car motorcade of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, entered the intersection of President Street and Utica Avenue in Brooklyn.

What’s Behind Israel’s Middle-Class Revolt?

Amid the flood of press comments about the "middle-class" protests that have been roiling the Israeli scene over the past weeks, a particularly cheerful note was struck by the American political philosopher Michael Walzer.