Islam is supposedly a religion of peace and friendship, but if you’re Jewish, you may be excluded from its friendly embrace. Sermons delivered by two imams in California recently prove this point yet again. At the Davis Islamic Center, Ammar Shahin prayed for the Al Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem to be freed “from the […]
Is a synagogue a security risk? The question inspires derision, but unbelievably enough, a municipal council in Australia recently banned the construction of a Chabad-affiliated synagogue, Congregation of Friends of Refugees of Eastern Europe, on precisely these specious grounds. The decision, taken in the Sydney suburb of Bondi, was upheld by a land use court, […]
Joshua Weinstein has gone where no American movie director has ventured in about 70 years. He has made a film that unfolds almost entirely in Yiddish, with a sprinkling of English and Spanish thrown in. Menashe, which opens in Canadian theatres on August 11, was filmed in Borough Park, a Hassidic neighborhood in New York City. Menashe, […]
When I last visited the sprawling site of the former Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, I knew I had seen one of the most diabolical and depraved places on the planet. The bleak barracks, the barbed wire fences, the guard posts, the gas chambers and the ruins of crematoria reminded me of the lengths Nazi Germany went […]
Seventy five years ago this month, the collaborationist Vichy regime in France committed its worst single crime. On July 16-17, 1942, French police in Paris rounded up 13,152 stateless Jews — men, women and children — and consigned them to purgatory. Some were taken to a detention camp in Drancy, near Paris. The rest were […]
Israel has learned a sobering lesson from the nearly two week standoff at the Temple Mount: Its sovereignty in East Jerusalem, already widely challenged by the international community, is subject to a panoply of constraints and pressures. Israel possesses sweeping powers in the eastern half of the city, conquered by the Israeli army in the […]
The new ceasefire in southwestern Syria, brokered recently by the United States, Russia and Jordan, has led to the first public dispute between Israel and the Trump administration. The truce, the culmination of months of negotiations in which Israel was involved, was announced on July 7 following the first meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump […]
Iraq’s dictatorial strongman, Saddam Hussein, ruled his country with an iron hand, tolerating no dissension. Barring a coup or fatal illness, he could have governed Iraq indefinitely had he kept his nose to the grindstone. But being guided by hubris and wildly false assumptions, he made the major mistake of invading neighboring Kuwait on August […]
Ida Lupino (1918-1995) was a prominent film actress and director in Hollywood in the 1940s and 1950s. In a 48-year career, which began in Britain in 1931, she appeared in 59 movies and directed eight others. As an actress, she was something of a femme fatale, projecting a gutsy persona and playing tough yet vulnerable characters. […]
Tucked into the lush green hills of the forested Carmel mountain range is Israel’s only artists’ village, Ein Hod. Founded almost 65 years ago by a Romanian Jewish painter, it’s a serene retreat far from the hustle and bustle of Israel’s coastal plain. A short drive from the port of Haifa, Ein Hod is a […]