By Rabbi Dow Marmur JERUSALEM –What some seem to regard as bad news for Israel may, in fact, bode well for its future. I’m referring to the uproar in the country and abroad following the very public criticism by Yuval Diskin, the former head of internal security, when he spoke of the “messianic” scaremongering about [...]
By Rabbi Dow Marmur JERUSALEM — Harbour of Hope is a new documentary by the Swedish filmmaker Magnus Gertten. It describes how, in the last days of World War II, his country rescued thousands of inmates from Nazi concentration camps. The opening scene shows old footage of a girl looking into the camera. It’s my [...]
By Rabbi Dow Marmur JERUSALEM — There’s talk of early elections in Israel. Though the government has still more than a year to go, it needs to replace the so-called Tal Law that de facto exempts the ultra-Orthodox (haredim) from military service and which some time ago the Supreme Court declared to be unconstitutional. This [...]
By Rabbi Dow Marmur JERUSALEM — The late Prime Minister Rabin is said to have been fond of a story about a Jew in some small East European town who was facing execution by the local squire. The Jew asked for a postponement for a year and promised that in that time he’d teach the [...]
By Rabbi Dow Marmur JERUSALEM — By all accounts, the most admirable feature of American Thanksgiving is that it’s being celebrated by all citizens. Irrespective of religious affiliation, skin colour or income, all Americans feel the need to give thanks for the country in which they live, even when they’re grossly disadvantaged in comparison to [...]
By Rabbi Dow Marmur JERUSALEM–It’s always refreshing when serious people refuse to give up hope – as a growing number of “peaceniks” in Israel have done – about solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The latest effort comes from three distinguished Israelis: a former admiral, a former peace negotiator and a businessman. I understand the article in [...]
By Rabbi Dow Marmur JERUSALEM — Israel has something of an anti-European complex. That’s the impression readers of The Globe and Mail, Canada’s “national newspaper,” are likely to get from a report by its Jerusalem-based correspondent Patrick Martin. Writing about Israeli reactions to the incident that cost a colonel his job because, as Martin put [...]
By Rabbi Dow Marmur JERUSALEM –The full Hebrew name of Holocaust Memorial Day is yom hasho’a v’hagvurah, the day of catastrophe and heroism. The commemorations in Israel tend to put at least as much stress on the heroism as on the catastrophe. Thus the annual state ceremony at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial complex, in [...]
By Rabbi Dow Marmur JERUSALEM — What was supposed to be a routine ceremony in the official residence of the President of Israel turned out to be a spirited rebuttal in the current debate about the relationship between Israel’s Supreme Court and the Knesset. It has been flamed by a new proposal by Minister of [...]
By Rabbi Dow Marmur JERUSALEM –I surmise that most of the media in the Diaspora that report on Israel will describe the way the Government of Israel handled the “flytilla” earlier this week to have been not only successful but also prudent. That’s not the only impression I get here. To recap: Several hundred activists [...]
