A plastic curtain separated my father from his neighbor in the geriatric emergency room. The man, who wore a velvet yarmulke and sported a beard, lay on a gurney. His wife talked on the phone in Yiddish. Then she began speaking to me: “We came here last night from a wedding, our grandson.” I said “Mazel tov.” Why didn’t I just say “Congratulations”? Her external ...
Every year for the past six, I’ve spent an early summer weekend camping with several dozen Jewish parents (mostly fathers) and their elementary school aged kids. We all live in the New York area, but roughly one-quarter grew up in Israel. The other three-quarters hail from the United States or other parts of the Diaspora. …
President Trump’s recent trip to Israel did not matter. He wants to broker the “ultimate deal” — Israeli-Palestinian peace — and thinks the Saudis, who share Israel’s fear of Iran, can help. But the Saudis can’t make Palestinians endorse their own subjugation. Peace requires freedom for the millions currently living under Israeli control without citizenship, free movement, due process or the right to vote for ...
“Mr. President, with you, we have hope.” So said Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas during his joint press conference at the White House on Wednesday. As with so much in the Donald Trump era, it’s hard to know whether to laugh or cry. …
Donald Trump ended his speech yesterday at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum by talking about Gerda Weissmann Klein. For good reason; hers is an amazing story. While being liberated by the United States Army in May 1945, Weissmann — then 21 years old, white-haired and weighing 68 pounds — met an American Jewish lieutenant named Kurt Klein. A few months later they were engaged. ...
In the April 16 New York Times, Marwan Barghouti announced that he and 1,000 other Palestinian prisoners were launching a hunger strike. It’s easy to understand why. West Bank Palestinians are colonial subjects. Even though the Palestinian Authority has some power, it is not a state, and the Israeli military can freely enter the West Bank and arrest anyone anytime it wants. The prisoners now ...
Last week brought a new conventional wisdom to Washington: Internationalism is back. Donald Trump’s military strike in Syria, his embrace of the Export-Import bank, his acknowledgment that China isn’t actually manipulating its currency, and his public humiliation of Steve Bannon sparked a rash of articles suggesting that Trump’s presidency may not signal the rise of nativist nationalism after all. Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, H.R. McMaster, ...
In a column last week, I compared IfNotNow, the Millennial-powered movement challenging American Jewish complicity in Palestinian repression, to Black Lives Matter. That upset some people,including IfNotNow itself, which issued a statement rejecting the comparison. That’s fine. I’m a fan of IfNotNow’s, but the movement has no obligation to agree with everything I write, just as I have no obligation to agree with everything it ...
I spent last Shabbat with students from Harvard Hillel and was reminded, again, how important a generational movement IfNotNow is becoming. I don’t think most older American Jews grasp it yet. This is our Black Lives Matter. …
It’s fitting that the AIPAC Policy Conference, which convened this week in Washington, D.C., falls every year at around the same time as the holiday of Purim. Because the two have a lot in common. On Purim, Jews read the Book of Esther, which tells the story of a Jew who unexpectedly gains influence with a mighty king. She learns that a wicked man named ...