For about two centuries, from the late 1700s to the 1920s, the itinerant Jewish peddler was a perennial fixture in mostly rural landscapes around the globe. Weighed down by a pack on his back, or steering a horse-drawn cart crammed with trinkets and household products, he went house to house, farm to farm, mining camp […]
Chris Tarrant, the host of Chris Tarrant: Extreme Railways, embarks on a harrowing journey in his latest episode, Hitler’s Holocaust Railways, which was broadcast on the PBS television network earlier this month. A British train enthusiast, he discusses the role of trains in the Holocaust, travels to places like Terezin (Theresienstadt), Auschwitz-Birkenau and Lodz, and talks […]
Williams College, a reputable liberal arts institution in Williamstown, Massachusetts, has roared into the news for the wrong reason. Late last month, the student council, known as the College Council, took political correctness to an absurd and unacceptable level by voting to reject a request from a pro-Israel group, Williams Initiative for Israel, to be […]
She was a radical revolutionary and a professional agitator. Emma Goldman, a headstrong woman of conviction and resolve, was an advocate of free speech, free love and birth control in an era when such liberties were usually regarded as subversive. Above all else, she was an anarchist, a non-conformist staunchly opposed to capitalism. Her life […]
A ceasefire has ended yet another round of intense fighting between Israel and Palestinian armed groups in the Gaza Strip. The truce, brokered by Egypt, Qatar and the United Nations on May 6, has taken hold, but it could easily unravel and plunge the region into chaos again. The latest bout of cross-border warfare lasted […]
Given what happened in Germany and German-occupied Europe from 1933 to 1945, the 12-year interregnum during which German Jews were persecuted and murdered and Germany orchestrated the industrial-scale killing of European Jews in the Holocaust, Germans must be particularly vigilant in combating the scourge of antisemitism. No one knows this better than German Chancellor Angela Merkel. […]
Fed up with Toronto’s bitterly cold winter this year, I was more than ready for a warm-weather vacation down south. Nicaragua beckoned, but I passed because it was torn by political instability yet again. Having already been to Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica and Panama, I pivoted toward El Salvador, the smallest, most densely populated and […]
For about two centuries, from the late 1700s to the 1920s, the itinerant Jewish peddler was a perennial fixture in mostly rural landscapes around the globe. Weighed down by a pack on his back, or steering a horse-drawn cart crammed with trinkets and household products, he went house to house, farm to farm, mining camp […]
Chris Tarrant, the host of Chris Tarrant: Extreme Railways, embarks on a harrowing journey in his latest episode, Hitler’s Holocaust Railways, which was broadcast on the PBS television network earlier this month. A British train enthusiast, he discusses the role of trains in the Holocaust, travels to places like Terezin (Theresienstadt), Auschwitz-Birkenau and Lodz, and talks […]
She was a radical revolutionary and a professional agitator. Emma Goldman, a headstrong woman of conviction and resolve, was an advocate of free speech, free love and birth control in an era when such liberties were usually regarded as subversive. Above all else, she was an anarchist, a non-conformist staunchly opposed to capitalism. Her life […]
A ceasefire has ended yet another round of intense fighting between Israel and Palestinian armed groups in the Gaza Strip. The truce, brokered by Egypt, Qatar and the United Nations on May 6, has taken hold, but it could easily unravel and plunge the region into chaos again. The latest bout of cross-border warfare lasted […]
Given what happened in Germany and German-occupied Europe from 1933 to 1945, the 12-year interregnum during which German Jews were persecuted and murdered and Germany orchestrated the industrial-scale killing of European Jews in the Holocaust, Germans must be particularly vigilant in combating the scourge of antisemitism. No one knows this better than German Chancellor Angela Merkel. […]
Sherry Lansing broke the glass ceiling in Hollywood. The first woman to head a major movie studio, she was president of 20th Century Fox and chair of Paramount Pictures. As Stephen Galloway writes in the paperback edition of Leading Lady: Sherry Lansing and the Making of a Hollywood Groundbreaker (Three Rivers Press), she came of […]
American sex therapist Ruth Westheimer whimsically asks Alexa, her electronic assistant, to identify Ruth Westheimer. Alexa’s disembodied answer is correct, bringing a smile to Westheimer’s face. “She knows who I am,” she exclaims excitedly. Westheimer, a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, is indeed famous. Long a fixture on radio and television, the author of a […]
Two hundred years ago, a crowd of men, women and children assembled at St. Peter’s Field in Manchester, a major British industrial city, to demand political and economic reforms. The ruling elite, falsely but conveniently equating their demands with sedition and insurrection, ordered troops to break up the peaceful gathering. More than a dozen protesters […]
A “white crow” in Russian is a reference to an unusual person or an outsider. This appellation was certainly applicable to the late Russian ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev. A non-conformist, he was brash and outspoken, straddling the thin line between the permissible and the unacceptable. Although he achieved recognition and fame as one of Russia’s […]
Sheldon Kirshner, a journalist living in Toronto, has freelanced for various publications in Canada and abroad. He holds a BA degree in European history from Concordia University in Montreal and
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Viewpoint Discrimination
Williams College, a reputable liberal arts institution in Williamstown, Massachusetts, has roared into the news for the wrong reason. Late last month, the student council, known as the College Council, took political correctness to an absurd and unacceptable level by voting to reject a request from a pro-Israel group, Williams Initiative for Israel, to be […]
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