More fuel for my belief that the power of the lobby has peaked: Trita Parsi, realist, writing about why Obama doesn’t need more sanctions against Iran, he already has the tools to do this diplomatically… The neoconservatives really are passing…
Yesterday I said that the Burg event at the New York Public Library Monday night was special for a statement that Avraham Burg, the former speaker of the Knesset, now an author, made about the relationship of American Jewry to…
Richard Witty, who has a sneaker for Chabad (so do I; I had fun in the Chabad House in suburban Philly), sends me this Haaretz column by the usually reliable Bradley Burston in which he is shocked by the Mumbai…
So far everything I’ve quoted from the conference in NY yesterday on Jews uniting to end the war (six years after the war started) has been positive. Very forward statements from Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz, Elizabeth Holtzman, and MJ Rosenberg. These people…
Yesterday demonstrated the political limitation of Jewish communal organizations for me. At some point you are doing a potato sack race–or whatever you call that race where your leg is tied to someone else– with a neocon. That’s how it…
Today’s conference at New York’s Central Synagogue on Jews uniting against the war—six years after it matters—was remarkable for two things: the soulsearching over the Israel/Palestine issue, which represents real progress after years of denial that the occupation had anything…
Last night Chris Matthews, a political genius, said that Hillary Clinton was crazy not to try her damnedest to be Obama’s Sec’y of State because she would be dealing with tremendous historical challenges in the Middle East: the end of…
On Sunday there’s a conference of Jews in New York seeking to recover the progressive anti-war tradition in Jewish life. I’m planning to attend. Rabbis Ellen Lippmann and Arthur Waskow. J.J. Goldberg, Amy Goodman. Register here. Oh, also: Michael Ratner…
The Forward justly recognizes Matt Brooks of the Republican Jewish Coalition as one of the 50 most important Jews in America, but its piece gives a kind of benediction to the contumely and smears he heaped on Barack Obama, as…