The Jews of Italy have survived four major plagues through the centuries — religious persecution, ghettoization, fascism and the Holocaust — and have endured. Sara Reguer, the chair of the Department of Judaic Studies at Brooklyn College, relates their 2,000-year history in a cogent and deeply-researched book, The Most Tenacious Of Minorities, published by Academic […]
Holland was liberated by the Canadian army 70 years ago next month after five years of Nazi occupation. The official date of the liberation was May 5, 1945, two days before Germany’s official surrender to Allied forces. The people of Holland paid dearly for German aggression. By one estimate, 150,000 Dutch civilians perished during this […]
The United States and Iran are enemies yet partners in the fast-changing political landscape of the Middle East. As the old saying goes, politics makes for strange bedfellows. Once Iran’s close ally, Washington severed diplomatic relations with Tehran in 1979 after its embassy in Iran was seized by an Iranian mob. Since that momentous moment, […]
Californians Jeff and Jodie Morgan offer a contemporary approach to eating and drinking in the Jewish tradition. The Covenant Kitchen: Food and Wine for the New Jewish Table (Random House) is billed as the first kosher cookbook that pairs food with wine. It’s a fresh approach that will surely please gourmets and wine aficionados alike. […]
Nestled in a serene and picturesque valley 5,000 feet above sea level and framed by three heavily wooded volcanoes, Lake Atitlan is one of Guatemala’s most majestic tourist destinations, often compared to Lake Como in Italy. Sparkling blue on a sunny day and brooding on a cloudy one, it’s Guatemala’s deepest body of water. Ringed […]
The specter of Islamic extremism haunts Europe. For about the past decade, a succession of young European Muslims fired up by Islamic radicalism have carried out one terrorist assault after another — from the train bombing in Madrid in 2004 that claimed the lives of 191 Spanish commuters to the attacks on the French satirical […]
Jews in Palestine were not handed political sovereignty on a silver platter. Not by a long shot. As Bruce Hoffman observes in Anonymous Soldiers: The Struggle For Israel, 1917-1947 (Alfred A. Knopf), they achieved statehood through diplomacy and civil disobedience but above all through armed resistance and terrorist violence. In this magisterial account, told mostly […]
According to news reports from Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin have both turned down invitations to meet Jimmy Carter, the former president of the United States, due to their perception that he’s adopted “anti-Israel positions.” Carter is supposed to arrive in the region within the next 10 days, but it looks […]
The Six Day War produced waves of euphoria in Israel. Within an unbelievable week in June 1967, the Israeli armed forces had crushed several Arab armies, enabling Israel to expand its territory substantially. It was a historical watershed in the history of the Jewish people. Shortly after the last gun fell silent, a group of […]
It was 1968 and another U.S. presidential election season was in the offing. With the Republican and Democratic Party conventions coming up, the ABC television network, trailing behind the CBS and NBC networks, needed a compelling media event to increase its audience share. ABC settled on a debate that would pit William F. Buckley, a […]