By Loren Kantor STUDIO CITY, California — In Jewish Mystical Teaching, the 22 letters of the Hebrew Alphabet are the energetic building blocks of creation. Like the periodic table of elements, God formed all things in the universe through combinations of Hebrew letters (just as atoms of oxygen and hydrogen combine to form a molecule […]
Notes from the Woodcutter: The Aleph Read More »
Middle East, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts
Story and photo by Judy Lash Balint NITSAN, Israel — There’s the Zionist dream and then there’s the Zionist reality. There are those who dream about living in Israel but can’t quite make it for compelling personal reasons, or who just missed the boat when they had the chance. Others, like Moshe and
Through it all, they’ve been together Read More »
Middle EastBy Ira Sharkansky JERUSALEM — It isn’t pretty. Israel did what it could to keep the photographers away. It doesn’t play well against the history of Jews having to move from place to place, and encountering borders closed against them. Jewish officials have problems with their own population, ambivalent about providing refuge and the prospect
African migrants in Sinai stir emotional debate Read More »
Ira Sharkansky, Middle East
By Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel CHULA VISTA, California –In Yiddish we say, “A Mentsch tracht, Gott lacht,” which can be translated as, “Man plans, God laughs.” If Heaven has sitcoms for the angels and God to watch, life on planet Earth must be really funny at times. God must be feeling relieved. Getting booed from
God must be feeling relieved Read More »
Michael Leo Samuel-Rabbi, USA
By Rabbi Yeruchem Eilfort CARLSBAD, California — Over the past two weeks we have again witnessed some of the great machinery of American Democracy at work; the conventions of the Republican and Democratic Parties. The conventions have certainly become highly entertaining, and frankly, fun to follow. The festive and positive atmospheres, which are buoyed by
God and Jerusalem returned to platform on fortuitous date Read More »
USA, Yeruchem Eilfort-RabbiObama in DNC address: ‘Commitment to Israel’s security must not waver’ (JNS.org) U.S. President Barack Obama, addressing the Democratic National Convention on Thursday night, said America’s “commitment to Israel’s security must not waver, and neither must our pursuit of peace.” Obama’s statement came after most of the Israel-related talk at the convention in Charlotte, NC,
JNS News Briefs: September 7, 2012 Read More »
InternationalBy Ari Briggs In the middle of the Arab uprising of 1936, the Jewish settlement of Kfar Hittim in the Galilee was established, on 2,000 dunams (200 hectares) of land which the Jewish National Fund had purchased in 1905. David Ben-Gurion, who was then the head of the Jewish Yishuv, gave his tacit approval,
Bedouins with help of NGOs grab land in Negev Read More »
Middle East
By Shoshana Bryen WASHINGTON, D.C. –“I don’t want to be complicit if they (Israelis) choose to do it (attack Iran’s nuclear program),” said Joint Chiefs Chairman Martin Dempsey. News flash, General Dempsey: You are complicit in the way that counts; you are trapped: the Iranian leadership does not care what we say — or what
Dempsey is ‘complicit’ in downgrading U.S.-Israel relations Read More »
Middle East, Shoshana BryenBy Evelyn Gordon WASHINGTON, D.C. — When Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi was first elected, Israel worried that he might seek to revise the Israeli-Egyptian peace agreement. After all, senior members of his Muslim Brotherhood party had threatened repeatedly to “review” it during the parliamentary and the presidential campaigns. Yet this idea always had a serious
Morsi changing the status quo with Sinai remilitarization Read More »
Middle EastBy Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel JERUSALEM — Let me begin with the good news first. The Democratic Party platform reinstated the importance of Jerusalem to our country’s values and principles—along with God too! Now comes the bad news. Although the section of Jerusalem was reinstated, the sections pertaining to the Palestinian refugees and the terrorist
Something not kosher about DNC Jerusalem fiasco Read More »
Michael Leo Samuel-Rabbi, USABy Ira Sharkansky JERUSALEM — You’ve heard about the dog that didn’t bark. Now we have the sentence that was not in the draft of the Democrats’ platform. It was there in 2008. According to the New York Times, the key sentence was, “Jerusalem is and will remain the capital of Israel”. The Jerusalem Post
God, Jerusalem, and the Democrats Read More »
Ira Sharkansky, USAJerusalem language returns to Democratic platform after three attempted votes (JNS.org) Recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, at first controversially omitted from the 2012 Democratic Party Platform, will return to the document after three attempted voice votes at the party’s convention in Charlotte, NC, on Wednesday. On all three voice votes, a seemingly indistinguishable
JNS News Briefs: September 6, 2012 Read More »
International, Jewish Religion
By James Colbert WASHINGTON, D.C. — With his most recent comments in London last week, Gen. Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, put a greater distance between the United States and Israel over a potential attack against Iran. “I don’t want to be complicit if they [Israel] choose to do it,”
U.S. blinks in nuclear confrontation with Iran Read More »
Middle EastBy Daniel Pipes “President Obama has thrown allies like Israel under the bus.” That’s what Mitt Romney, Republican candidate for president, said in the high-profile speech accepting his party’s nomination last week, repeating a slang phrase for sacrificing a friend for selfish reasons. Romney had deployed this phrase before, for example in May 2011 and
Comparing Romney and Obama on Israel Read More »
USA