The Bond Between Greenberg and Robinson
With the timely release of the new DVD of my film The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg upon the heels of the Jackie Robinson...
AIPAC Gets the Rap Genius Treatment
Rap Genius, a website that decodes lyrics from rap songs with nearly Talmudic levels of analysis, has for some time now been the place to...
Art, Religion and the Encounter between Two Traditions
“This is a religion. You’re entering a world with its own tradition.” Those unfamiliar with Chaim Potok’s novel My Name is Asher Lev would likely think...
Community Voices: Fayyad Resigned–But Did He?
Salam Fayyad was 55 years old when they found him six years ago. "They" are the secretary of state and the European donors who wanted...
From the Back of the Bus to Segregated Beaches at Brandeis University
This weekend marked the fifth annual Gender and Human Rights lecture and conference at Brandeis University. Named for Diane (Dina) Markowicz, a student with a...
Israel: Secularizing, But Not Secular
About 15 years ago, the late writer and journalist Israel Segal, who left the ultra-Orthodox world at a young age, provided a pessimistic account of...
Women Warned Not to Say Kaddish at the Western Wall
The Jerusalem police commissioner sent a letter to Women of the Wall today warning that it would enforce the law prohibiting women's public prayer at...
The View from Istanbul: Why Iran Might Be a Threat
This was a very old plan. Shortly after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, communists diligently planned to establish a Marxist state in one or more...
Omar Meets Omer
Today, there's more proof that The Wire--the obscure HBO series about Baltimore's drug dealers, cops, newspaper reporters that one day will get a lot of...
Jews and Booze
Professor Marni Davis (University of Georgia) got the idea to write her Ph.D. thesis –subsequently a book – on the relationship between American Jews and...
Around the Web
The New York Times reports that Israel "moved closer to its goal of energy independence on Sunday as natural gas from a large offshore field...
The View from Istanbul: Peace Always Wins
People who claim to have “won” a war are lying. There are no winners in war. War may seem to have brought victory to one...