Category: Other

Like so many in our community, I have been both surprised at the outpouring of shock and horror by non-Jewish friends, work colleagues and the community at large, and also bitterly disappointed by some of the complete silence from those who I…

Leaving Oslo to Reach Peace

For more than thirty years, the Oslo process has structured all discussion about the Israeli–Palestinian future. It has shaped institutions, diplomatic language, and even the expectations of the international…

The year was 2006 and in Israel, the 2nd Lebanon war raged. In Australia, especially at Sydney University, we fought antisemitism. I was sitting at Shalom College, home of the Australasian Union of Jewish Students, planning how to fight the…

Every bit as cynical and hypocritical as German investment in Alabama—because of Alabama’s penchant for putting people to death, including by savagely torturing them with nitrogen gas—is France’s investment in Alabama; just as I wrote…

After Bondi Beach, over 1000 Jews reportedly put on Tefillin there, and many more took home menorahs to light up the world.

Australia began a re-examination of how they have dealt with antisemitism since October 7.

England decided that chants…

If you open the New Testament looking for the date of Jesus’ birth, you will not find it. The Gospel of Luke recounts a census under Caesar Augustus and shepherds watching their flocks by night. Matthew describes a star, Magi from the East, and a…

Cary Nelson

WEAPONZING ANTISEMITISM AT THE MLA

The latest attempt to weaponize antisemitism at the Modern Language Association, North America’s most influential disciplinary organization, is in motion for potential fulfillment in January….

Eric M. Meyers, a teacher of Jewish Studies at Duke University, points out that a section from the book of Prophet Zechariah is the Haftarah (an extra Bible reading) for the holiday of Chanukah. The rabbis chose Zechariah 2:14-4:7 as…

Morgenstern was dead. Dead as a lump of clay. Dead as he had been during his life, only more so.

There had been only one mourner at his funeral, his surviving business partner, Eliezer ben Kamtsin. This gentleman is a hollow-eyed, thin-lipped…

The final night of Chanukah always coincided with the Hebrew birthday of my late grandmother, Bubba, and so that was when we celebrated it. Bubba survived six concentration and labour camps and fought alongside my grandfather in the…