When many of America’s leading celebrities called for a “Free Palestine” eighty years ago this week, they were talking about freeing Palestine from British occupation, in order to establish a Jewish state.
For both MAGA and Arday’s defenders, truth doesn’t matter, lies are accepted as facts, and tribe matters above all.
In this time of introspection and rising adversity, let us resolve as American Jews to write our new chapter by better understanding our history.
Clinical trial statistics tell us where investigational drugs are tested. They do not tell us who owns the assets, who uses the evidence to obtain regulatory approvals or who captures the economic value when those drugs succeed.
A government can force a woman to cover her hair. It cannot force loyalty.
In standing up to Macklemore and declaring, “I was born a Jew,” Pink did something painfully rare in today’s entertainment world: she refused to abandon her people when supporting Jews became unfashionable.
The 9/11 families who asked him to stay away were not judging his beliefs about G-d. They were responding to what he has said, whom he has hired and endorsed and whom he chooses to associate with.
The United States once attached “Never Forget” as a catchphrase of post-9/11 memory. Its people, however, are now fast forgetting, flirting instead with the descendants and sympathizers of those who flew those planes.
This is a season when we think about obligations and about what we owe one another. Here is a communal obligation, arvut hadadit, that we can actually meet.
One thing I am sure of: Judea is inarguably a proud Jew, a steadfast member of this multimillennial Jewish Peoplehood. The other is that I love the man, plain and simple.
