By Shoshana Bryen WASHINGTON, D.C. — It should be hard to pick on Norwegians and their government this week, but it is impossible to overlook Svein Sevje, Norway’s ambassador to Israel. Trying to “outline the similarity and the difference in the two cases” (mass murder of Norwegians by a Norwegian and mass murder of [...]
By Isaac Yetiv, PhD LA JOLLA, California — The Founding Fathers, fearful of “tyranny,” created, intentionally, a system of “divided government” to make impossible the concentration of power in the hands of one man or one group. But today, because of the great divisions in our society, the fierce partisanship and factionalism have led [...]
By Ira Sharkansky JERUSALEM — A friend sent me a link to a New York Times Op-Ed piece entitled “Israel’s Identity Crisis.” The points were Who is a Jew? and Why is Netanyahu confounding the peace process by insisting that Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish State? It is not difficult to understand why the New York Times would [...]
By Carol Davis LA JOLLA, California— While the La Jolla Playhouses Sleeping Beauty, Rose (Aspen Vincent), of the fairy tale of the same name, flutters her eyelids in an attempt to awaken (in a sleeping disorder clinic) after a nine hundred year slumber yours truly had everything she could do to keep her eyes from fluttering [...]
By Donald H. Harrison ALCATRAZ ISLAND, California – From the prisoners’ viewpoint, what was the worst thing about the federal prison here on “the rock” in the middle of San Francisco Bay? Was it the strict routines they had to follow? The loneliness? The chance that they may fall afoul of the rules and [...]
By Rabbi Leonard Rosenthal SAN DIEGO–Parashat Mas’ei begins with a review of the journeys of the Israelites after the Exodus: “These were the marches of the Israelites who started out from Egypt . . . Their marches, by starting points, were as follows:” (Num. 33:1-4) In the first half of Numbers 33:2 the Torah [...]
By Donald H. Harrison OAKLAND, California – Ever since the 1990 enactment of the Americans with Disabilities Act, it has been increasingly commonplace to see buildings, vehicles, and streets built to be accessible to wheelchairs. But such was not the case in 1936 when Franklin D. Roosevelt was the President of the United [...]
By Ira Sharkansky JERUSALEM –One of the elementary lessons in civics is that government does the job of sorting through various demands and deciding priorities, or Who Gets What. The key to the ongoing exercise is politics. In a democratic regime, votes bring to office the officials who make those decisions. If enough citizens find [...]
By Ira Sharkansky JERUSALEM — One might say that this is a hell of a way to run a government, and then argue whether the reference is to Israel or the United States. Here the quarrel is whether the problem is housing, medicine or the government. There it is the the stubbornness of Republicans [...]
By Shoshana Bryen WASHINGTON, D.C. –The horror of mass murder in Oslo last week begs nothing as much as distance. All the first comments were wrong. Knowledgeable people – “experts” – were sure it was Muslims and wondered why Norway was a target since Norway is certainly hospitable to Muslims and hostile – sometimes virulently [...]
