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When Vince, aide to President MacKenzie Allen on ABC’s “Commander in Chief,” chooses to secretly tie the knot with his partner to protect the President during an election year (Episode 15, “Ties that Bind”), the writers are suggesting that our country is more likely to accept a woman president than the legitimacy of same-sex marriage.…

I never would have thought that two American professors from prestigious American universities would have much in common with Osama bin Laden. But then I noticed that in the most recent tape attributed to him, Bin Laden identified those in the West seeking to halt the genocide in Darfur as “Zionist-crusaders,” just on the heels…

I recently attended a talk where Rabbi Mordechai Liebling discussed his visit to Sudan as part of an interfaith delegation. He commented wryly that this was one time where anti-Semitism worked in his favor: all of the Sudanese officials with whom he met genuinely assumed that a rabbi had great influence over both media and…

“This Zionist-Crusader war” is probably the most oft-repeated line invoked by the terrorist-madman Osama bin Laden in his latest rant against the West. As Bin Laden sees it, “A war is under way to offend the messenger of Allah, his religion and his Umma (nation). The Muslim preparedness and their jihad should be on a…

This April 25 we observe Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. The date chosen for this observance is 27 Nissan in the Jewish calendar, associated with the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943 in which 13,000 Jews perished in resisting Nazi extermination. Of all the unspeakable and senseless tragedies that took place during this…

There are many reasons to remember and commemorate the Holocaust, which we will do this coming week around Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, April 25. Here are six reasons, each an important lesson we can learn from the Holocaust, lessons we cannot afford to forget. (They are presented in no particular order.) One: One person…

After my last post, I received a number of responses asking me to flesh out and explain a little more what exactly I was trying to say about all this Jewish memory stuff. So with Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, coming on April 25, I thought I would explain myself a little better. There is…

In our house, the experience of Passover always comes early, with the preparations. As we shop, put away, clean, dust, scrub, vacuum, and scrub some more, the transformation our house undergoes slowly begins to pervade our consciousness as well, as if by some alchemical process. And slowly, gradually as we transform our environment by putting…

I was wondering the other day why family gatherings for Passover are so different than those for Thanksgiving? So many people find Thanksgiving to be an exercise in family dysfunction. In fact, an entire niche of the travel business is now catering to those escaping the drama of their family’s Thanksgiving mishegas. In contrast, Passover…

“Remember this day that you departed from Egypt from a house of bondage for you with a strong arm God took you from here.(Exodus 13:3).” If there is one thing Jews love, it’s “to remember.” Perhaps the only thing Jews do more on Passover than remember is eat matzah and get indigestion. But more seriously,…
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