The United States has been a safe haven for Jews since its inception as a nation more than two hundred years ago. And since World War II, American Jews have made tremendous strides in breaking down discriminatory barriers that once were taken for granted with a shrug of the shoulders. But of late, in the […]
Judging by the last few U.S. presidential elections, ultra-Orthodox American Jews are firmly in the Republican Party camp. But of late, some Republican haredim have changed sides and voted for the Democratic Party, says Nathaniel Deutsch, a University of California Jewish studies professor who has closely studied this traditional and insular community. By far the […]
Yeshiva University has painted itself into an untenable, unsustainable and unacceptable position. As a secular institution, this flagship university of Modern Orthodoxy in New York City accepts public funding for its graduate programs, yet its undergraduate program is religiously oriented. The inherent tension between these diametrically opposed streams came to a head recently following the […]
Irving Abella left an indelible mark as a scholar, particularly after the publication of his landmark book, None Is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe 1933-1948, in 1982. From that point onward, he and his co-author, Harold Troper, were recognized as two of the most preeminent Canadian historians of their generation. A stinging […]
With sadness and resignation, I regret to say that the world’s oldest and most durable hatred is burning bright yet again. Reports released in recent days by Tel Aviv University’s Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry, the Anti-Defamation League in the United States, and B’nai Brith in Canada point in only one disconcerting […]
Mel Mermelstein was a fearless fighter and a loyal son who kept faith with his doomed father. Bound by a solemn pledge to him to perpetuate the memory of the Holocaust, he successfully sued American Holocaust deniers in a celebrated case that exposed them as malicious liars and forced them to pay a hefty financial […]
A historic resolution condemning Holocaust denial and distortion was passed by the United Nations General Assembly yesterday. It was sponsored by Israel, co-sponsored by Germany and backed by the United States and Russia. Its passage was intended to coincide with the 80th anniversary of the diabolical Wannsee Conference in Berlin, during which 15 high-ranking Nazi […]
One can readily understand why American Jews were rattled by the hostage incident at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas, last Saturday. Although the four Jewish hostages escaped unharmed after 11 hours of captivity, and Muslim attacker Malik Faisal Akram was killed, the standoff left a bitter aftertaste in the mouths of Jews. In a […]
In what amounted to a settling of accounts, some Holocaust survivors in postwar Poland tried to avenge the deaths of their loved ones by exacting punishment on Poles who murdered Jews. These survivors regarded revenge as a therapeutic sacred right and duty, said Polish historian Katarzyna Person in a zoom lecture earlier this month sponsored […]
The Senate in Romania passed a law recently requiring high schools and vocational schools to teach a course on the Holocaust and the Jewish people. Due to be introduced in 2023, its contents will be fleshed out by the Ministry of Education in consultation with the Elie Wiesel Institute for the Study of the Holocaust […]