I don’t share Joachim Martillo’s view of the Holocaust. The Nazi crimes define the word heinous. I don’t see the expulsion of Arabs from Palestine in ’47-’48 as comparable to the Holocaust. I’m also not going to be blocking Martillo…
A great book came out last year called To Hate Like This Is to Be Happy Forever, by Will Blythe (yes, a friend), about the undying rivalry between Duke and the University of North Carolina. The rivalry goes way beyond…
Last night, a religious friend told me about an interesting exchange between Bill Moyers and the female Episcopal bishop, in which the bishop justified discriminating against gays as bishops by saying they would be “crucified.” Here’s the exchange: BISHOP KATHARINE…
On Thursday night at the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, 30 W. 68th Street in New York, a number of Jews including myself will be on a panel about “How Do We Talk About Israel?” The discussion is about: how to…
Recently I argued that anti-Zionism might just be the new Zionism for Jewish youth, because it appeals to the same idealistic/prophetic chord in Jewish history that Zionism formerly appealed to. I find some support for my view in an unlikely…
Last night, watching sports, I was shocked to see a Gatorade ad in which Harvey Keitel as a first-base coach counsels Derek Jeter to steal second and calls pitcher John Lackey “a schmendrick.” (Here’s Lackey’s comment). Shocked because schmendrick is…
Congratulations to David Chase for the brilliant ending of The Sopranos! And thanks to him for entertaining us and bringing the culture forward, doing his small part to liberate all the young Meadows and Anthonys in America from the dark…
This morning I woke up with a fresh understanding of the dual-loyalty issues I have been chewing away at in this blog. It is actually staggering when you think about it, that a leading professor of political philosophy–Michael Walzer–can speak…
Speaking of Norm Finkelstein, here is the story of how my blog ended up here, and off the Observer site. And yes, it’s a form of censorship; these views will not be underwritten in the mainstream…