24 Sep
History, Latest, Moment Magazine

Jewish Justices Brandeis and Frankfurter as Stamps

By Maxine Springer A new series of postage stamps celebrating four U.S. justices includes Louis Brandeis and Felix Frankfurter, two of seven Jewish justices in the history of the High Court. Brandeis, a Zionist who once said, "To be good Americans, we must be better Jews, and to be better Jews, we must become Zionists," was known as the "people's justice" for his defense of civil liberties. He served on the Court from 1916-1939. Read more about Brandeis in Moment's review of Louis D. Brandeis: A Life. Frankfurter, the first naturalized American be to appointed to the Supreme Court, served from 1939-1962. Before joining the Court, he was an adviser to FDR and a friend of Brandeis. Read more about Jewish justices in Moment's cover story about religion and the Supreme Court, where scholars discuss whether the religious beliefs...

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02 Sep
History, Latest

Britain's Schindler

By Sarah Breger In Prague yesterday, a train set off on a four-day journey to London to honor the work of a man referred to as “Britain's Schindler.” Nicolas Winton, a British stockbroker, organized eight trains to carry 669 Czechoslovakian children to the safety of England. This year’s "Winton Train" carried 170 passengers—including over 20 of those that he saved—and consisted of an original locomotive and carriage form the 1930s. The train commemorated the 70th anniversary of what would have been the biggest trainload of children on Sept 1, 1939—the day that Hitler invaded Poland and all borders controlled by Germany were closed. All 250 children meant to board that train died, and Winton has often said the image of those children waiting for a never-coming train haunted him. Winton, who turned 100 this May,...

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05 Feb
Archives from the past..., History, Latest, topics

Avigdor Lieberman: Israel's Le Pen

By Jeremy Gillick Two years ago, Ha'aretz correspondent Lily Galili profiled the right wing Israeli politician and founder of the Yisrael Beiteinu ("Israel is our Home") Party, Avigdor Lieberman, for Moment. Having served as Transportation Minister under Ariel Sharon, and having subsequently been fired in 2004 for opposing the withdrawal from Gaza, Lieberman "re-emerged," Galili wrote in early 2007, "as a strange hybrid of an Israeli version of Jean-Marie Le Pen (the infamous French extreme right-winger) and respectable statesman." Indeed, it was recently revealed that Lieberman was at one point a member of Rabbi Meir Kahane's Kach Party, which was banned from Israeli elections in the late 1980s for inciting racism against Arabs. Now, with Israeli elections just days away, Lieberman and his nationalist party are poised to make huge gains. Polls indicate that Yisrael Beitenu could win...

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03 Feb
Arts & Culture, History, Latest

Kiev Celebrates Sholom Aleichem, then Destroys his House

By Jeremy Gillick Following celebrations in Kiev in honor of the 150th anniversary of Sholom Aleichem's birth, developers destroyed his house. The great Yiddish writer would not have been surprised. Many of his stories dealt with misfortune, luck and the arbitrariness of life. He himself fell victim to risk and a volatile economy. As Dara Horn writes in an essay at jbooks.com, "Right on the Money," Aleichem "lost his entire fortune on the Kiev stock exchange, and spent the rest of his life evading his creditors." On another note, for the first time in a long time, Sholom Aleichem has a new book out in English, Wandering Stars, also in honor of his 150th birthday (the Forward has an excerpt). Thankfully, it doesn't directly relate to Madoff or any other contemporary scandal, crisis, election or war;...

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23 Jan
History, Latest

George Mitchell: Good for the Jews?

By Jeremy Gillick Yes, it's true. Barack Obama has ordered Guantanamo closed. That's big news, at least symbolically. But the bigger news, the decision that could really change things in the Middle East, is his selection of George Mitchell as special envoy for the Middle East. Unlike the other candidates for the position-Dennis Ross and fellow Clintonites like Martin Indyk, Aaron David Miller, and Dan Kurtzer-Mitchell's resume includes making peace in addition to policy. And critics of the Mitchell appointment (lefties: the special envoy doesn't matter anyway, righties: Mitchell is too "fair") are not very convincing. Perhaps the most fascinating tidbit I stumbled on while parsing through old magazine articles about Mitchell was a piece by Atlantic Editor Andrew Sullivan titled "Fighting Irish" from the New Republic's August, 2001 issue. Sullivan argues that Mitchell, among others, was...

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10 Dec
History, Latest

Impresario for the Lost Voices of Theresienstadt

By Mandy Katz Perhaps an apt follow-up to my post Monday about a journey from the Holocaust to the Ivy League? Yesterday's Washington Post carries an inspiring obituary for 82-year-old violinist Joza Karas, one of the Christian righteous. If not already officially recognized at Yad Vashem, he should be, for dedicating much of his life to preserving the music of Theresienstadt. Many musicians and composers were among the 140,000 Jews interned at the the Nazi camp in Czech territory, where prisoners defied the machinery of death by forming orchestras and choirs, and staging plays and concerts and art exhibitions. Most of them eventually died, though: 33,000 on site, from starvation and illness, and another 90,000 after being deported to Auschwitz and elsewhere. Karas was born in Warsaw, the son of a Czech official who fought with the resistance...

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08 Dec
Archives from the past..., History, Latest

College Admissions? Of Buchenwald and Princeton

By Mandy Katz Some of his Frankfurt gymnasium teachers ended up in Buchenwald, my Tel Aviv correspondent Ernest Stock writes, but he ended up graduating from Princeton in 1949. God bless the G.I. Bill. Now a retired journalist, Ernie offers this unconventional college memoir on the website of the Princeton Alumni Weekly. Having escaped the Nazis at 14 by trekking with his little sister into Spain from occupied France, Ernie was drafted into the U.S. military in 1943. On demobilizing, he scored high enough on the Army's college entrance exam to matriculate as a sophomore at Princeton in '46, at a time when that august institution admitted roughly 25 Jews each year under an unspoken "no-quota" quota system. Ernie played a central role in engineering the first meetings between Princeton's tweedy Jewish undergrads and local notable Albert Einstein....

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