By Jonah Cohen

Recent studies show that, relative to their small population, the Jewish people have disproportionately and significantly contributed to “the top ranks of the arts, sciences, law, medicine, finance, entrepreneurship, and the media.” Oddly, Jewish day schools have yet to highlight such intellectual accomplishment in a coherent curriculum. This article argues that Jewish day schools are in need of a “Jewish Great Books” program which would introduce Jewish youth to the original works of eminent Jewish intellectuals in the various academic and artistic fields.

Quid ergo Athenis et Hierosolymis, quipped Tertullian, what has Athens to do with Jerusalem? Answer: quite a bit. The metaphor that western civilization rests on two opposing cities, Athens and Jerusalem, highlights one of the major difficulties confronting Jewish day schools nowadays. How do we coordinate secular curricula and influences (Athens) with Jewish courses and values (Jerusalem)?

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By Phyllis Chesler

In the midst of my unshakable preoccupation with Hell, I suddenly found myself flung back into the Garden of Earthly Delights, where for six full hours I experienced holiness right here on earth. Time stood still, time no longer existed: a small, sure sign of eternity.

Ambassadors from many universes all came together to celebrate a peaceable, celestial, wedding. I felt as if we were participating in an episode of Star Wars—except we were not actors and the gathering was both real and yet beyond reality. So many different kinds of people were there. Jews, Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, pagans, and atheists, feminists and traditionalists, leftists, and rightists, gay and straight, and people with no overriding view of the events of the day whatsoever.

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By Benjamin Balint

Abstract: Another generation of anti-Israel intellectuals is coming into its own. To understand what this portends, we might do well to listen to the pronouncements of Tony Judt, historian première classe and representative of a new group that dangerously restyles old ideas.

I. Tony Judt, the accomplished New York University historian, brings both impressive lucidity and considerable learning to his uncommonly readable studies of nineteenth- and twentieth-century social history.

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By Stanislaw Krajewski

Abstract: This paper studies the problem of Jews, communism and Jewish communists, primarily with a Jewish audience in mind. Despite there having been Jewish communists, who like other communists may have been victimizers, there was no such phenomenon as Jewish communism. The Jews who remained in Eastern Europe were often victims rather than victimizers. The number of Jewish communists was important, but not as large as antisemites asserted. The problem lies in the quasi-religious zeal of communists who were Jews. The message is that communism does pose a moral problem to Jews.

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By Phyllis Chesler

This Amazon warrior has become something of a schoolmarm, a veritable Ms Manners of the raging Cultural Wars. Thus, say I, “I don’t like delivering savage soundbites nor does debate as a blood sport turn me on.” Primly, I say: “Ideological opponents should engage in civilized exchanges and they should keep talking rather than retreating into dangerous silences or into overt warfare.”

Oh what fine and pretty words—but what about those moments in history in which we must either act or we become collaborators in the death of others?

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By Phyllis Chesler

Professor Norman Simms was born in 1940 and grew up in Borough Park, Brooklyn (my home town). He studied at Machzike Talmud Torah, Styuvesant High School, Alfred University, and received his Ph.D from Washington University in English Literature. He protested the War in Vietnam, moved to Canada to teach at the University of Manitoba, and from there to the University of Waikato, in Hamilton, New Zealand where he has been ever since.

He has increasingly devoted himself to Jewish studies and to the phenomenon of “crypto-Jews” as “secret agents” of rabbinic wisdom. He has published 15 books, including “Masks in the Mirror: Marranism in Jewish Experience” (Peter Lang, 2005) and “Festivals of Laughter, Blood and Justice” (Sussco, 2007) and hundreds of articles. He also edits and publishes the inter-disciplinary journal, Mentalities/Mentalities.

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by Robert Sklar*

We talked for 30 minutes but historian and political analyst Daniel Pipes’ core message came quickly: The civilized world is at war. And American Jews are engaged on two distinct fronts: against Islamists who hate the West and against Jew-haters who despise Zionism.

Pipes helped crystallize why there’s something to the belief that diplomacy doesn’t end wars - victory by one side over the other does. I’m not willing to scuttle hope that compromise won’t resolve America’s war against Iraqi insurgents or Israel’s conflict with Palestinian terrorists. But I understand that if you don’t win a war, you lose it by default.

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By Phyllis Chesler

I am not a Muslim nor am I a religious Muslim. I am certainly not a Qur’anic scholar. But I am a religious Jew. As such, I want to respect peoples of faith, including those who are secular fundamentalists. One does not have to agree with one’s neighbors in order to respect them and one does not have to disagree with others in a verbally uncivil or physically violent way. I applaud all efforts to “reform” or re-interpret ancient religions in accordance with our contemporary understanding of human and women’s rights.

I have also been drawn to the Islamic East for almost sixty years and count many Muslims and ex-Muslims as friends and political allies. I have lived in or traveled to Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Uzbekistan but now, I can no longer visit most of the countries that once called out to me (except in books).

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UMMA=THE MUSLIM NATION=UMMI=MOMMY

By Phyllis Chesler

Last week, in a letter, 138 Muslim clerics sought to find “common ground” but only with Christians. In my view, they did so because Christians are the only religious group that outnumbers the Muslims demographically, by about six to seven hundred million.

In a sense, from a psycho-analytic point of view, this is an example of “literal” or “concrete” thinking. The World Trade Center and the Pentagon are symbols of American might. Hence, destroying these structures is “literally” the same as destroying American infidel power.

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By Fern Sidman

Conservative commentator and prolific author, Ann Coulter can be called a lot of things, but the shy, retiring type she is definitely not. Neither is she timid or taciturn. Since her emergence on the political commentary scene, she has assumed the position of the darling of the neo-cons and die hard right-wingers as she is a most vocal and outspoken cheerleader for the Republican party. She is a ubiquitous presence on the television talk show circuit and can always be counted on to raise the ire of Democrats, liberals and leftists of all stripes with her predilection for spewing forth a seemingly endless foray of acerbic jibes and over the top controversial analyses. In the past she has fired her salvos at women, ethic minorities, gays, Supreme Court Justices, Democratic presidential candidates, the widows of 9/11 victims, the New York Times and anyone else that does not subscribe to Coulterism.

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By Phyllis Chesler

PART ONE

Towards the end of Ramadan, (October 11th, 2007), a group of 138 Muslim clerics released a letter which called for peace between Muslims and Christians. Jews (my people), Hindus, Buddhists, other non-Christian denominations, secularists, and atheists were not included in this theologically-based appeal.

Already, I’m worrying. Why are they only talking to Christians? Although Jews represent less than 1% (.003%) of the world’s population, (there are perhaps 14 million of us), why not talk to Jews — since Jewish scripture is cited in the letter; and because we are also viewed as so very powerful?

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by Daniel Pipes*

“We are all Keynsians now,” Richard Nixon famously asserted just as the economic theories of John Maynard Keynes fell into disrepute. Likewise, one could have said with similar confidence in 1989, as Israel’s existence reached wide acceptance, “We are all Zionists now.” No longer.

Count the ways Israel is under siege: from Iranians building a nuclear bomb, Syrians stockpiling chemical weapons, Egyptians and Saudis developing serious conventional forces, Hizbullah attacking from Lebanon, Fatah from the West Bank, Hamas from Gaza, and Israel’s Muslim citizens becoming politically restive and more violent.

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by Phyllis Chesler

Let me state what is painfully obvious. Despite our most hopeful illusions, people are not really “good” nor do they really practice “peace”. While power corrupts, absolute powerlessness corrupts absolutely and there is no safe place, neither high nor low, for the most vulnerable of our citizens.

The world is always at war. People fight, it’s what we do. We quarrel, often in deadly ways with other family members and we fight bitter, brutal battles with anyone who is “different” in terms of gender, class, race, ethnicity, tribe, religion, and ideology. The planet is perpetually plagued by civil and national wars. Not to be outdone, persecuted peoples internalize the prejudice and hatred leveled against them and unleash it against others like themselves.

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An inspiring 1-minute Rosh Hashana video from Aish.com, with music from Brian Eno’s “Music for Airports:”

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By Phyllis Chesler

In her three part series, Amanpour is far more combative and confrontational with both Jewish and Christian religious leaders than she is with Muslim leaders. She is warmer, softer, more “at home,” with even the most extreme of Islamist leaders, perhaps even more respectful, than she is with their allegedly Jewish or Christian counterparts.

Amanpour completely fails to make the distinction between Islamists who teach hatred of infidels and women and who blow infidel and Muslim civilians up (as well as honor-murder their own women); Israelis who are under perpetual terrorist siege and who are trying to defend themselves against Islamist attacks; and conservative Christians who are trying to mobilize votes, change laws, or win hearts and minds with words, not bombs (although she certainly has lots of footage of the bloody bombings at abortion clinics–bombings I personally abhor and mourn–as do many Christians).

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