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…
Category: Other
-

The Blogs: A Chanukah Fairy Tale: with apologies to Charles Dickens | Harold Behr
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…
Continue Reading
-

The Blogs: Chanukah Light, Australia in Darkness | Shane Shmuel
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…
Continue Reading
-

The Blogs: Dermer’s Exit and Israel’s Strategic Vacuum | Jose Lev Alvarez Gomez
Ron Dermer was never a conventional diplomat; he was a force multiplier. American-born, Ivy-trained, and ideologically fluent in Washington’s grammar of power, Ron Dermer fused personal trust with state authority and converted access into…
Continue Reading
-

The Blogs: Bondi Beach: from Sanctuary to Memorial | David Hersh
Australia was my home for the first 25 years of my life. I grew up in North Bondi, in the heavily Jewish Eastern Suburbs. My parents like many of their generation were Holocaust survivors. My mother arrived in Australia in 1949 with her…
Continue Reading
-

The Blogs: The Last Candles of Bondi | Andy Blumenthal
Bondi Beach is Australia’s shame,
a shoreline salted with Jewish tears,
where the candles of Hanukkah
were shot out by men who pray to death
and call it holy.For years, the sky grew dark with warnings—
marches praising Hamas,
chants for…Continue Reading
-

The Blogs: Have hope in Zionism | Ofer Idels
Last month, the Tikvah Fund awarded the Herzl Prize to three of the most influential voices in American Jewry: Dan Senor, Bari Weiss, and Ben Shapiro. During the discussion, the panelists grappled with the future of American Jewish identity,…
Continue Reading
-

The Blogs: Christmas Trees on Succos? Context is Everything and More Zevachim 104-106 | Simcha Feuerman
Zevachim 104 — Known Unknowns: When Awareness Creates Reality
Continuing its discussion of the status of a sacrifice that becomes disqualified, the Gemara on Amud Aleph discusses an interesting case in which a sacrifice was found to be a Continue Reading

The Blogs: Counter-Terror Without Counterinsurgency | Matthew Robin
Seen through this framework, Israel and India have independently converged on a strikingly similar counter-terror model, despite radically different geographies, cultures, and political systems. Neither country treats terrorism primarily as a…
Continue Reading

The Blogs: Dear Santa: What my 6-Year-Old Jewish Daughter Asked for Christmas. | Martin Alintuck
I have never had a Christmas tree.
I have never had my photo taken with Santa Claus.
I have never had mistletoe hanging in my house.
I have never had a Christmas fruit cake. (Although to be honest, I think that one is more about my palate…
Continue Reading