20 May
2011 September-October, Arts & Culture, Jewish World

Jews and the San Francisco Gold Rush

In the early 1850s, Adolph Sutro, a cocky young man with a thick walrus moustache, headed west to make his fortune. Originally from Prussia, Sutro had managed his family’s textile factory and immigrated to America in the wake of the 1848 revolutions, which had stirred up fears of renewed anti-Semitism. A born adventurer obsessed with books, machines and outer space, Sutro was unimpressed with Baltimore, where his mother and numerous siblings had settled. Lured by news that gold had been discovered in the American River in California in 1848, Sutro boarded a steamer to Central America, trekked through the jungle to the Pacific, and caught another a ship up the coast. He disembarked in San Francisco, alone and penniless, in 1850. Around the same time, another Prussian-born Jew—Abraham Abrahamsohn—made his way to New York. He arrived...

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18 Jan
2009 May-June, Israel

Can Israel’s Electoral System Be Fixed?

Try as he might, David Ben-Gurion could not reform Israel’s electoral system, which gives extraordinary power to small parties. Today, a new generation of reformers takes on the challenge. There was a reason that Israel’s wild-haired, hardheaded founding father and first prime minister named himself Ben-Gurion, Hebrew for son of a young lion. Born David Grun, the charismatic Polish-born leader with a forceful personality and a streak of realpolitik was accustomed to confronting difficult problems—and having his way with them. One of the greatest challenges he faced was transforming the fledgling country’s political system. The electoral process aroused in Ben-Gurion more anger and annoyance than any other institution he took part in creating. “In our electoral system,” he said in 1954, “the citizen has no right to choose his representatives. The candidates are selected not by the...

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11 Jan
2009 July-August, Culture, History, Issues, Religion

Post-Racial Rabbis

One of the first things that six-year-old Alysa Stanton noticed when her family moved into a predominantly Jewish neighborhood in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, was a rectangular ornament affixed to the doorpost of her new home. Her uncle Edward, a “devout Catholic who went to shul on occasion,” explained to her that it was a mezuzah. “He would wear a yarmulke sometimes,” she says, “and he knew a lot about a lot of things.” A few years later her uncle, who spoke eight languages, gave her a Hebrew grammar book, which she still has. This fleeting introduction to Judaism set Stanton—the granddaughter of a Baptist minister and daughter of a Pentecostal Christian—on a journey that led her to convert to Judaism 18 years later. Stanton, now 45, recently passed another milestone on her spiritual journey. On June...

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09 Nov
2009 January-February, In the News, International

Does Syria Matter?

The Obama Administration is expected to support talks between Syria and Israel as part of its efforts to negotiate an Israeli-Palestinian peace. Tony Badran, Tom Dine, Martin Indyk, Joshua Landis, Moshe Ma’oz, Michael Oren, David Schenker and Andrew Tabler on whether a Syrian-Israeli deal is in the cards.

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25 Jun
Latest

Watch out for Wolpo

By Jeremy Gillick The right wing group SOS Israel, led by Rabbi Sholom Dov Wolpo, leader of Chabad's messianic wing in Israel, has published the first in a series of English-language newsletters that includes a vaguely threatening message to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and accuses him of selling out his nation and country to "High Commissioner Hussein Obama." The newsletter comes in advance of the 15th anniversary of Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson's death. The pamphlet includes an excerpt from an interview with 83-year-old Geulah Cohen, a former Knesset member who was an outspoken opponent of Ariel Sharon's 2005 disengagement from Gaza: The Lubavitcher Rebbe warned Mr. Moshe Katsav 17 years ago...that he, personally will be the first to fight with all his forcefulness and might against Shamir so that his government will fall. The fact remains that any...

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10 Jun
Latest

Iran's Velvet Revolution?

By Jeremy Gillick What will change if Mirhossein Mousavi, a former Iranian Prime Minister, a "moderate," and the primary challenger to reigning Iranian president and rabble-rouser Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, wins this Friday's much-hyped Iranian election? Will Iran abandon it's nuclear program or change its position vis-a-vis Israel or the United States? Will the country undergo a "velvet revolution," as Saeed Laylaz, editor of an Iranian business daily, told Ha'aretz it would? Or might Ahmadinejad's cult-like supporters, backed by the Basij paramilitary and the Revolutionary Guard, revolt, a possibility considered by Robert Dreyfuss at The Nation? The answer, of course, is that we don't know. In addition to knowing very little about how Iranian politics actually work--even many of the foremost American experts on Iran concede this unfortunate deficiency--Mousavi himself is a mysterious candidate. Writing in The New...

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05 Jun
Latest

Jewish Fanaticism

By Jeremy Gillick In the wake of the Manis Friedman controversy, some suggested that Moment should have censored itself in order to protect the Jewish community's image. Abe Foxman, for example, the controversial director of the Anti-Defamation League, told the Forward that, while he was "not shocked that there would be a rabbi who would have these views," he was "shocked that Moment would give up all editorial discretion and good sense to publish this as representative of Chabad." (In Moment's defense, Manis Friedman is a regular "Ask the Rabbis" contributor: see his former responses here, here and here.) But if it's fair to silence the extremism within when it's a merely a fringe phenomenon limited to a few radical rabbis, surely it's wrong not to publicize--and criticize--it when it appears to be widespread and cross-denominational. Here's...

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