Opinion
Peter Beinart’s Attack on Me and Cory Booker
Last week Peter Beinart wrote a column on The Daily Beast called “Cory Booker’s Rabbis” which surmised that my 20 year friendship with the Democratic Senate Candidate in New Jersey, and my having brought him to the Jewish community, might be pushing him toward too much of a pro-Israel posture. Peter, whom I also know from Oxford when he was a Rhodes scholar and whom I like and respect amid...
October 11, 2011 9:40 am
A Post-Zionist World Zionist Organization
A recently published Jewish Telegraphic Association (JTA) news report reinforces the view...
October 10, 2011 12:38 am
Can Obama Be Trusted on Israel?
This past Sunday night I conducted a conversation between Eric Cantor, the House Majority...
October 7, 2011 1:42 pm
Nicholas Kristof: Enemy of Israel
I read the op ed of Nicholas D. Kristof in The New York Times of October 6th with its headline...
October 7, 2011 11:44 am
What Are We Fighting For?
For Jews, the holy day of Yom Kippur being celebrated this weekend is recognized as a time...
October 5, 2011 3:25 pm
Israel Loses an Old Friend In Fraser and we Long For His Return
Malcolm Fraser was Prime Minister of Australia between 1975 – 1982, coinciding with the...
October 4, 2011 2:28 pm
Anwar Al-Awlaki and the US’s Long War On Al-Qaida
The well-deserved death of Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen continues a string of recent battlefield...
October 3, 2011 2:52 pm
Erdogan of Turkey’s Blood Libel Against the Jewish State
The Jewish debt to the Turks goes back centuries when the Ottomans took in thousands of Jewish...
September 28, 2011 1:21 am
The Ultimate New Year Greeting
For many Jews this time of year provides an opportunity, not just for personal renewal, but...
September 27, 2011 10:07 am
Is Turkey Going Rogue?
In a Middle East wracked by coups d’état and civil insurrections, the Republic of...
September 27, 2011 10:00 am
President Barack Obama Expresses Support For Israel
I attended the gathering of United Nations delegates at the New York Public Library held by...
September 26, 2011 11:34 am
A Crucial Week at the UN
This has been an amazing turnabout. A few sentences in Barack Obama’s speech at the...
September 24, 2011 9:00 pm
Is Israel Truly Isolated?
These words were not stated by a frustrated minister in the current Israeli government, but...
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Personalities Sports
NBA Finals a Time to Remember Legendary Jewish Coach Red Auerbach
JNS.org - At the start of each nationally televised game of the 2013 NBA Finals between the San Antonio Spurs and the Miami Heat, ABChas aired a film-clip montage of basketball’s great players and coaches—a montage that includes Jewish coach Arnold “Red” Auerbach, the mastermind behind nine championship teams for the Boston Celtics. Red was one of four children of Marie and Hyman Auerbach. Hyman was a Russian-Jewish immigrant who left Belarus when he was 13. The couple owned a deli and [...]
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Arts and Culture Jewish History
The Marx Brothers and Jewish Identity
JNS.org - The sons of Jewish immigrants from Germany and France, the Marx Brothers became zany masters of stage and screen who continue to captivate audiences. But in addition to providing comic relief, their films captured the drama of the entry of their marginalized religion into the U.S. Wayne Koestenbaum, author of the 2012 book The Anatomy of Harpo Marx, explains that the Marx Brothers’ Jewishness as a family “was evident, marked, thoroughly legible.” “Within a family already marked as Jewish within [...]
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Arts and Culture Jewish Identity
SuperJew
For my shekels, the question of whether the comic book character Superman, is Jewish or not shouldn’t even be questioned. Born and named Kal-El by his father Jor-El, “El” is one of the ancient names for God used throughout the bible and found in great prophets such as Samue-el, Dani-el and angels Micha-el and Gavri-el and of course, Isra-el. As Simcha Weinstein in his entertaining book, “Up, Up And Oy Vey” points out, “Kal” is the root of several Hebrew [...]
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Israel Sports
Formula 1 Road Show Thrills Jerusalem
JNS.org – Some 100,000 people attended Israel’s first-ever Formula 1 Road Show in Jerusalem on Thursday and Friday. For several hours, the controversies that normally characterize Jerusalem were put aside, and a diverse mosaic of Israelis watched up close as the motor-sport stars temporarily conquered the city. “It was an amazing experience, the most fast and furious thing I have seen,” spectator Masada Porat told Israel Hayom. “It was a rare, extreme event that explodes in your face.” Spectator Irena [...]
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Book Reviews Jewish Identity
Klara’s Journey Casts Jews in Fast-Paced Adventure Through Russian History
JNS.org – “If you’re sick, move away. Have some consideration for others,” a red army soldier scolds a slow-moving old man selling train tickets. “No, fires back the old man, proud, haughty, not realizing it’s a new country, a Bolshevik country where force heads the list instead of civility,” reads the following line in Ben G. Frank’s new novel, Klara’s Journey, released June 1. Reminiscent of Boris Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago—whose backdrop is also a train ride across the Russian frontier during the [...]
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Personalities Theater
Nora Ephron, Famed Jewish Screenwriter, Remembered Through Tribeca Film Festival Prize
JNS.org – For filmmaker Meera Menon, no honor could have been more fitting than winning the inaugural award named after famed Jewish screenwriter and novelist Nora Ephron, the woman whose work inspired her. At the recent 2013 Tribeca Film Festival, Menon was named the first recipient of the $25,000 Nora Ephron Prize, given to a writer or director whose work embodies that of the late Ephron, who wrote the scripts for a number of hit films, including “When Harry Met [...]
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Book Reviews Personalities
Book Review: ‘Jewish Jordan’ Memoir an Important Guide for Players and Coaches
JNS.org – Despite his friends’ and family’s doubts that a young Orthodox Jewish athlete could ever play college or professional basketball without compromising his religious values, between 1999 and 2009 the “Jewish Jordan” defied conventional wisdom and found his place on the court. In his new memoir, Jewish Jordan’s Triple Threat, Tamir Goodman describes his triumphs and disappointments in life, crediting his practice of Judaism for shaping his identity as an athlete and his understanding of basketball as a team sport. [...]
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Blogs Sports
Omri Casspi, ‘Jewish Jordan’ Partner on Basketball Camps to Inspire Youths On and Off the Court
Tamir Goodman (left) and NBA forward Omri Casspi—pictured on the court of the United Center, home of the Chicago Bulls—together run basketball camps that seek to inspire youths on and off the court. Photo: Courtesy Tamir Goodman. JNS.org – Before last year, basketball camps for Jewish youths never had an instructor quite like Omri Casspi, a forward for the National Basketball Association’s (NBA) Cleveland Cavaliers and the first Israeli-born player in NBA history. Casspi is a de facto ambassador for [...]
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