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…
DePaul’s lamentable decision underscores the fact: There is no room in our discourse for sharp criticism of Israel. As a commenter notes below, Grad students take notice..
A couple weeks ago I watched an Asian-American panel on C-Span talking about responses in their community to the Virginia Tech shootings. The main feeling was, shame; they worried that non-Asian Americans would blame the Asian community for the murders….
Neocon Scooter Libby has lots of friends, and many wrote letters to his judge, alas to little effect. (Pat Buchanan believes the huge sentence to be “punitive.” I agree.) A couple things interest me about the letters. Paul Wolfowitz says…