Jews and Blacks or Jews and African-Americans or Jews and voting. Plenty of causes. And Jews have been there. Time and time again. Are we ready for another rally to another cause? This one is right down our alley — but … are we up for it? This pas...

Back in the day, Jews wanted to take care of their family first — mostly because if we didn’t nobody else would. Then we wanted to care for the Jewish people mostly because if we didn’t nobody else would. Governments in Europe from whence most of us...

When Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, the Jewish reaction was pretty well muted. We did not know a whole lot about the guy. Seemed pretty decent, had always been friendly to the Jewish Community. We should have looked under th...

In 1968 Rachel and I made our very first trip to Israel. I have told the story of that trip and what it meant to us. On the flight back to the United States, we confirmed the promise we had made to Adi Ben Orr, our guide in Israel: That we would send...

“The Jewish Vote.” What ever happened to the “Jewish Vote”? While we never meant more than one or maybe one and a half percent of the total turnout, there was always press, commentary, speculation, even some wringing of hands about the turnout...

Haimish is a Yiddish word meaning …? To Google it means “Homey” — that is a far cry from Yiddish. To me it means my grandmother’s wooden bowl and “chopper.” When I was in high school my grandmother lived with my Aunt Rosie just a short bus ride away...

So, I was in the gym at my Sports Club one day, getting dressed next to my locker mate, nice guy named Jay. Jay is head of technology at a large hospital chain in our town. I know he’s got two boys just entering middle teens. I know this because h...

Let’s go back in time. The 1960s. Hippies. The March on Washington. George Wallace. Viet Nam. The Edmond Pettis Bridge. Remember? Well, I guess that those of us of a “certain age” do. We remember the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. We remem...

Let me put the disclaimer out first: I am no biblical scholar — I am no expert on ancient Jewish history. So, this column is really in the form of a few questions about belief and my own life. I have stated before that I was raised in a totally n...

Well, hello there! I suppose you’re wondering why I’m writing after all this time. Let’s do a Cliff Notes: Got sick in February of 2019. Three weeks in the hospital after a misdiagnosis. Lost 16 pounds. Recuperated at home. Rachel and I could not m...

I cannot count my first 17 years as a Jew. My father inherited a hatred of Orthodoxy from his father, a dedicated Socialist. Therefore, I would not be bar mitzvahed until my 40s—but that’s another story. My Zionism and Judaism rose together in tha...

“A Near Death Experience.” Ever had one? There actually is such a thing. Been there—done that. Well, I did—and it ain’t a picnic. About two months ago I developed a cough that would not go away. We complacently kept the same primary medical p...

Since the first large wave of Jews arrived in the U.S., we have fought for human rights. It is in our own self-interest to do so. We believe in taking care of our fellow man, in equal rights, equal opportunity, etc. You know, the stuff that allowed...

We watched a Netflix program the other night titled “Mossad.” It consisted of interviews with mostly former Mossad agents and executives. At one point the interviewer asked “Why is the Mossad pictured in so many nations as a bunch of assas...

Civility. It was something basic to our society. We were taught at home to be respectful of other people, specifically those older than ourselves. We were taught to listen to other peoples’ opinions, not interrupt and then offer our own take on t...

Religion does play a part in politics. When John F. Kennedy was the first Catholic elected president in 1960, the rumble was that the Catholic vote was united —there was an underlying fear that “The pope would now rule American politics.” Nonse...

I was born into what was known as the “Sha, Still” generation. Jews, who had been in the U.S. since long before the Declaration of Independence, still did not want to call attention to themselves in the 1930s. The fear of a backlash and stronger dis...

There was a time when “real” anti-Semitism was alive and doing well in the United States. I have written before that had we moved to Shaker Heights, Ohio, two years earlier than we did, we could not have bought a house there. It was not until 194...

Dialogue and argument among Jews are as old as our people. When God told Moses to “get out of town” not every Jew in Egypt agreed. “Too dangerous!” “Moses is meshugana.” Luckily for us all, the “ayes” won and the Jews became a nation. The syn...

It’s an old story and has resonance probably only for people of a certain age whose life made it almost necessary to look at everything through the “I am a Jew” lens. Back in 1969, When I told my 93-year-old immigrant grandmother “Bubby! We just la...

Jews used to be used to losing. The poor shlep. The cringing schlemiel. The Hebrew prayers that call for God’s help; God’s blessing. While Jabotinsky was exhorting the Jews of Eastern Europe to either leave for what was then Palestine or arm the...

In my last column I tried to reduce some 5,000 years of our history to less than a thousand words. I apologize for the gaps. So, now let us turn to the “Palestinians.” If you search history you will find that the land that is today Israel did not...

It’s an old expression: A definition of insanity is doing the same thing in the same way time after time and expecting different results. It’s been said many times about the Arabs in Israel time after time. And of course, not much ever changes. I r...

Truthfully? I don’t remember when I first heard the word “Holocaust.” In the 1940s I went to Bala Cynwyd Junior High and then Lower Merion High School in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, where out of 1500 students, less than 20 were Jews. In my senior year,...

Our Torah tells us of a man named Abram who probably lived in what is now Iran. He was head of a small “Clan”—also identified as a “Tribe.” The Tribe consisted of a group of loosely connected family members: sons, daughters (of which Abram had none...