AAA-Writers and photographers

Below are the names of writers who are currently active.  For others, living and deceased, please type their name into the search box above the masthead on our home page, www.sdjewishworld.com

The Lasting Significance of David Hume

The pandemic, which has taken over three million lives and continues to ravage parts of the world; the rise of Trumpism, culminating in the January 6th attack on the Capitol; the degradation of the environment and the threat posed by anthropogenic climate change; these things, and others, have served to alert many of us that the comfort we take in the notion that what has always been the case one’s whole life will always remain the case is nothing more than a pleasant fiction. Several centuries ago, a Scottish philosopher made a similar observation, and notably took it quite a bit further. [Sam Ben-Meir, Ph.D]

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Sam Ben-Meir, Science, Medicine, & Education

A Jewish Odyssey from Ethiopia to Israel and Back

“From Africa to Zion” is a remarkable memoir that takes us from the author’s childhood in a rural Ethiopian village without electricity or running water through his perilous journey to a crowded, multi-ethnic refugee camp in the Sudan, where disease and crime were rampant, and onto his arrival to the modern world of Israel, in which his family were initially mystified by such conveniences as toilets and refrigerators. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison, International, Jewish History, Jewish Religion, Middle East

Ethnoreligious War in Gaza and Israel

Here is my latest update about Operation Guardian of the Wall. Luckily, our city, Kfar Saba, has been spared any damage. But because (3,000) rockets are still being launched  into Israel from Gaza, Israelis of all types have had to contend with ethnoreligious rioting in mixed Arab-Jewish towns, even to an actual pogrom in Lod, a city near Ben Gurion Airport, where synagogues, houses, stores, and cars were torched and residents attacked. [Steve Kramer]

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Middle East, Steve Kramer

A Word of Torah: Standing Together

This week we begin the fourth of the five books of the Torah, the book of BaMidbar. BaMidbar means ‘In the Desert.’ It is also called Sefer HaPikudim, which translates as the Book of Numbers. The portion has the same name as the book itself. It is telling that this portion is read before the holiday of Shavuot, which comes out this year Sunday night through Tuesday night. [Rabbi Yeruchem Eilfort]

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Jewish Religion, Middle East, Yeruchem Eilfort-Rabbi

Frightening sectarian violence within Israel

“Here we go again!”  That was the heading of a post I wrote a few weeks ago about the general election, but heck, it works just as well for what I’m writing about today, the escalation of violence in Israel and Gaza.
The first time I realized that things were getting serious was when I was in my German lesson at the community centre near my house in Mevasseret Zion. “What’s that noise?” I asked the lady sitting next to me. “It’s the siren,” she said, whereupon we and the other participants (all elderly ladies like myself) got up and moved to the shelter, which happened also to house the toilets. We heard (and saw) fire trucks and ambulances racing past, and after hanging around for a while, we all packed up our things and went home to watch the news on TV. A rocket fired from Gaza had landed on a nearby hill, causing very little damage and no injuries, thank goodness. [Dorothea Shefer-Vanson]

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Dorothea Shefer-Vanson, Middle East

George W. Bush’s Warm Embrace for Immigrants to U.S.

If this book’s title, Out of the Many, One  sounds familiar, it is the English translation of the Latin expression  E pluribus unum, the unofficial motto of the United States, which can be found on the back of the $1 bill above the wings of the eagle.  Former President George W. Bush decided to include 43 portraits within this book, a number that was not happenstance.  He was the 43rd President of the United States. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison, International, Middle East, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, USA

Israeli Right-Wingers Exacerbate Hostilities with Palestinians

Whenever trouble erupted in Israel during the 1980s, “colleagues” in my newsroom in central Pennsylvania would gaze at me suspiciously. At a laundromat in the same small town, a Democratic city councilman complained about Israel’s oppression of the poor Palestinians and an Israeli gunboat raid on the Liberty, an American intelligence vessel discovered off the Egyptian coast during the 1967 war. [Bruce S. Ticker]

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Bruce Ticker, Middle East

Truth about the Book of Ruth

During the holiday of Shavuot, the practice in many synagogues is to read the beautiful biblical book Ruth. Various reasons attempt to explain the practice including that Ruth is said to have converted to Judaism around the time of Shavuot and so did the Israelites when they accepted the Torah; Ruth was an ancestress of King David who died on Shavuot; the harvest in Israel is described in the book, and Shavuot is the time of the Harvest. This is unlikely. [Rabbi Dr. Israel Drazin]

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Israel Drazin-Rabbi Dr., Jewish Religion

Satire: Tucker Carlson, Medina Spirit and Joe Biden

Tucker Carlson’s outlandish conspiracy theories have earned him the highest ratings for a cable news commentator. After he heard about Medina Spirit’s disqualification from winning the Kentucky Derby for using the drug betamethasone, here’s what we imagine could be the advance text of his editorial on this matter. [Laurie Baron, Ph.D]

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Lawrence Baron, Trivia, Humor & Satire