Last February, the head of the Mossad lost his cell phone. He left it in his car — that\’s right, the head of Israel\’s renowned top secret spy agency left his cell phone in his car. When he returned, he found someone had bashed his windows and stolen it. On it were the numbers of, well, everyone on whom Israel\’s security and defense relies.
\”People don\’t become suicide bombers for the fun of it, you know. They have grievances.\”
The question: How Jewish vs. how democratic should the Jewish State of Israel actually be?
That was really the question before Israel\’s Supreme Court.
More than a legal question, it led to serious and heated debate. The answer would be a defining factor in the very nature of the state itself. It came to the fore as the court was asked to decide if three cities, Jerusalem included, could ban the selling of pork.
The ruling: That cities cannot outright forbid the sale of pork and should respect communities that are predominantly religious but may sell pork in other areas of the city.
After a short respite from the fight over the Pledge of Allegiance, the Republican Party has once again thrown itself into the fray over issues of church and state. This time it\’s the Republican Party of Texas, President Bush\’s home state, which has approved a plank in its platform affirming that \”the United States of America is a Christian nation.\”
It used to be that when I wanted to throw a party, attend a rock concert, go for a swim or even take a haircut, I stopped myself and thought: Wait. Can I do this? What month is it? Am I allowed to celebrate? Or is it a Jewish mourning period?
The election analysis is all the same. For days, the political press was almost totally occupied with Sen. John Kerry\’s choice for the vice presidential candidate. When Sen. John Edwards was selected, everyone I saw or read had the same take: Terrific speaker; inexperienced; shady trial lawyer; fighter for the forgotten.
It was as if the journalists were afraid to stray off the beaten track or leave the reporting pack to have an original thought. Today\’s political reporting is a compendium of conventional wisdom. The motto of the press corps is: \”On one hand…. And on the other….\”
Twenty years ago, who could have thought that in 2004, the president of Russia would be attending a meeting of the leaders of industrialized democracies in the United States? Vladimir Putin\’s presence at the Group of Eight summit on Sea Island, Ga., in June could be seen as a sign of mind-boggling progress. Unfortunately, the rollback of democracy in Russia continues apace with more and more signs of a climate that bears some chilling similarities to that of 20 years ago.
Since the National Jewish Population Survey (NJPS) confirmed the continuing high rate of intermarriage, it\’s been quiet on the "outreach"vs. "in-reach" front. The Jewish In-Marriage Initiative is slowly becoming active.
After only a few months in Los Angeles, Shirley N., a 30-year-old Jewish immigrant from Iran, almost returned to her homeland because of financial difficulties.
He\’s not your typical yenta, he\’s not JDate and he\’s certainly not your grandmother\’s cousin once removed, but Asher Aramnia loves making love connections for local Jewish singles.\n\nWith countless successful matches to his credit, Aramnia\’s matchmaking activities through the Iranian Jewish Chronicle (Chashm Andaaz) magazine, which is operated by the Eretz-SIAMAK Cultural Center in Tarzana, has become something of a unique surprise in the local Jewish community, where women traditionally help Jewish singles find their soulmates.
