In one of the more bizarre stories of recent years, the owner and publisher of the Atlanta Jewish Times — a small Anglo-Jewish newspaper like this one — wrote an editorial in the paper’s Jan. 13 edition promulgating the Israeli assassination of President Barack Obama.
A JTA story, which appears on Page 3 of [...]

Sheldon Adelson, the Las Vegas casino magnate, was in the news last week. Adelson, a billionaire who is the largest donor to Birthright Israel and a prominent contributor to other Jewish causes, reportedly contributed $5 million to Winning Our Future, the pro-Newt Gingrich “super PAC.”
The super PAC, a new breed of political action [...]

Many Americans know about Rosa Parks, who became the “mother of the modern-day civil rights movement,” when she refused to surrender her seat to a white male passenger on a Montgomery, Ala., bus, on Dec. 1, 1955. Parks’ arrest sparked the 13-month Montgomery bus boycott, which led to the Supreme Court ruling that [...]

In the newspaper business, you never know which story will strike a nerve, provoke controversy among readers. A seemingly inflammatory article is published without a peep from readers; and then an apparently innocuous item sparks a rash of contending phone calls, letters and e-mails.
The Dec. 9 Hanuka special edition, for example, featured the [...]

We thank You for the heroism, for the triumphs, and for the miraculous deliverance of our ancestors in other days, and in our time.
— From the Hanuka prayer “Al Hanisim (For the Miracles)”
After our Thanksgiving feasts this year, we witnessed a disturbing pattern of consumerism run amok. Trying to get a jump [...]

It was a warm family get-together this past weekend, on the occasion of Alec Fantle’s Bar Mitzva at Bet Shalom Congregation. Alec made his parents, Phillip (my first cousin) and Susan Fantle, proud. And there was a topical moment during the Saturday morning service, which suits the purposes of this editorial.
The Torah portion [...]

In the July 22 edition of the Jewish World, I wrote an editorial with an environmental theme. The impetus was the ExxonMobil pipeline rupture that despoiled a stretch of the Yellowstone River in Montana.
The pipeline spill was nasty enough; but I mentioned that a far greater menace was the Keystone XL pipeline, which [...]

Well, that didn’t last long.
Last week, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the American Jewish Committee (AJC) issued a joint statement calling on Jewish organizations to sign a “unity pledge” on how to treat Israel in the run-up to the 2012 elections.
The press release from the two groups explained that the initiative was intended [...]

The Arab Spring and the Israeli social justice protests of the past summer, along with popular uprisings in Greece and Spain, are informing the current wave of demonstrations following on Occupy Wall Street, which has rolled into its fourth week in Manhattan (see story on Page 1). The plaza at the Hennepin County [...]

The Rosh Hashana liturgy includes the famous Unetane Tokef prayer, which says, in part: “On Rosh Hashana it is written, and on Yom Kippur it is sealed, how many will leave this world and how many will be born into it, who will live and who will die.”
The prayer includes a rather chilling litany [...]