Since returning to power late last December, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made it clear that one of Israel’s major foreign policy objectives is to normalize relations with Saudi Arabia and thereby enlarge the 2020 Abraham accords and reduce the scope and seriousness of the Arab-Israeli conflict. A normalization agreement with Saudi Arabia — a […]
Eighty years ago today, with the arrival of spring and the blooming of yellow daffodils in Poland, a small and resolute band of sparsely-armed Jewish fighters in the Warsaw ghetto rose up defiantly in a courageous, last-ditch stand to confront their genocidal Nazi tormentors. In remarkable feat of bravery that emboldened Catholic Poles to mount […]
Seven years have elapsed since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a burst of good faith, assured Conservative and Reform Jews that a permanent pluralistic prayer space would be established alongside the gender-separated prayer spaces at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Lamentably enough, he has yet to fulfill that promise. Netanyahu’s predecessors, Naftali Bennett and Yair […]
As Israelis celebrated Passover during the first week of April, Iran — Israel’s deadliest enemy — opened a new phase in its protracted struggle against Israel. The Islamic fundamentalist regime in Tehran, having long sought to bring its conflict with Israel to Israel’s borders, has promoted the idea of using Palestinian and Lebanese surrogates to […]
Jews who survived the Holocaust tended to be physically and mentally strong, adept at a certain skill, amazingly resourceful, or simply lucky. David Wisnia, who owes his survival to a fine singing voice, is one such person. Sara Taksler explores his unusual story in How Saba Kept Singing, a PBS documentary. A melange of on-camera […]
Varian Fry, the first American to be designated as a Righteous Gentile by Yad Vashem, is at the core of Transatlantic, a seven-part Netflix series. A Harvard University graduate and a journalist, Fry was one of the founders of the Emergency Rescue Committee. It was founded in New York City in 1940 with the aim […]
Ehud Olmert has the dubious distinction of having been the first Israeli prime minister to be jailed for a criminal offence. Convicted of bribery and obstruction of justice, he was released from prison in 2017 after serving 16 months of a six-year sentence. Now 77, Olmert was named prime minister after his predecessor, Ariel Sharon, […]
Baseball is not exactly a popular sport in Israel, and few Israelis have embraced it. But when the Israeli baseball team qualified for the summer Olympic Games in Tokyo in 2021, some Israelis tuned in and cheered on its players, most of whom were Americans with dual U.S.-Israeli citizenship. Their quest for a medal — […]
Judging by the most recent announcement from Lebanon’s Foreign Ministry, Israel has no right to defend itself and must grin and bear it when attacked by an enemy. Conveniently ignoring Palestinian rocket attacks at Israel from Lebanese soil, Lebanon’s Foreign Ministry announced it would file a complaint to the United Nations Security Council over Israel’s […]
Irving Rapper’s feature film, Rhapsody in Blue, is a paean to the legendary American Jewish composer and songwriter George Gershwin. It was broadcast on the Turner Classic Movies channel recently. An energetic drama and a buoyant musical by turns, this sleek 1945 production was panned by some observers, including the critic of The New York […]