To the woman who confronted me last Sunday at the Celebrate Israel Festival, ranting that airplane vapor trails are actually toxic secret government gasses: You complain that journalists don’t take you seriously. They might, if you didn’t walk around wearing large posters of airplane vapor trails.
I watched the video of the Boston Marathon bombings and thought, of course, of the bus bombings that wracked Jerusalem and Tel Aviv a decade ago.
Many years ago, when I was a young, harried father, I would sit in synagogue on Shabbat mornings and try to keep my kids quiet. It was a task I consistently failed at. Their mother, the rabbi, was on the bimah, leading services. She had the easy job.
It’s been just two days since President Barack Obama touched down in Israel, and no doubt you’ve probably read and heard it all by now. The ribbing banter with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his Best Frenemy Forever.
Bruce Feiler mentions Passover only in passing in his new book, “The Secrets of Happy Families,” but in some ways, the book is all about Passover.
Saturday afternoon on the upper deck of the Queen Mary, six young Jewish adults were engaged in a heated discussion over who’s hornier — men or women.
There was a moment that took place last week in this community that, if you didn’t witness it, you need to hear about it.
I belong to a small, elite club that I would like to invite you to join.
No one sends out press releases to announce that something is not anti-Semitic. That’s why this morning’s media is full of reports that host Seth MacFarlane’s Oscar performance last night was just shy of Mahmoud Ahmadinijad’s U.N. speech.
Last week, I met a man in his 60s whose father survived the Holocaust. He told me that, as a child, he trembled when he brought home a report card with anything less than straight A’s. “My father would say, ‘I managed to survive Auschwitz, and you can’t manage to get an A?’ ” the man said. We do, as a people, put a premium on intellectual prowess. Which of course raises the question of how we treat those of different, or lesser, abilities.
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