Abraham Joshua Heschel said that he prayed for one thing: the gift of wonder. He prayed for astonishment, for the capacity to be surprised. As he wrote, \”I try not to be stale. I try to remain young. I have one talent, and that is the capacity to be tremendouslysurprised at life and at ideas. This is to me the supreme Chassidic imperative.\”
Readers\’ Quiz: Who was the unhappiest Jew in Indiana last week?
Steven Grossman, chair of the Democratic National Committee, appeared at Tufts University in Boston recently to talk with students about his party\’s future.
With the May 4, 1999, deadline for the end of the Oslo process looming, the Clinton administration is now pushing hard for incremental agreements intended to buy more time for the faltering negotiations to get back on track.
Last Tuesday evening, we had dinner with Dick Morris. Can you think of a more fitting person to dine with during these days of atonement? Dick Morris: one-time adviser to the president of the United States. Widely credited with winning President Clinton\’s re-election. Caught on a tabloid video, sucking a prostitute\’s toes in a Washington hotel room. Admitted to letting his special friend listen in as he consulted with the commander in chief. Fired. Mocked gleefully by the media. Told to take a hike by his attorney wife,Eileen McGann. Dick Morris is the poster boy for atonement.\n
Rabbi Neil Comess-Daniels received the surprising news during Rosh Hashanah morning services at Beth Shir Sholom in Santa Monica. The Rev. Sandra Richards of the Church in Ocean Park stood up in her seat to tell him: The Oct. 1 vote on whether to decertify the union at the Miramar Sheraton Hotel had resulted in a virtual draw.\n
Amid the bizarre string of foreign-policy fiascos in which Israelfound itself mired as it greeted the new year, surely none was quiteso bizarre as the case of runaway teenager Samuel Sheinbein ofMaryland.
On Sept. 10, the day Secretary of State Madeleine Albright arrived in Israel, the country became preoccupied with another event: the disappearance of Ya\’acov Schwartz.
More than a century ago, Theodor Herzl was a prominent Europeanjournalist who lived in Vienna and was essentially a Jewish assimilationist. He wasn\’t much concerned about Jewish life or identity. As an intellectual, he considered himself a citizen of Europe.\n\nThen came the assignment that would change his life, and world Jewry, forever.
How did it come about that, just prior to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright\’s visit to the Middle East, the government of Israel released some funds it was withholding from the Palestinian Authority? And then after her departure, it transferred 50 percent of the moneys owed to the Palestinians?
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