On the surface, they may not seem to share much in common. Victoria Gendel is a charming, pixyish Russian woman. Elias Inbram is a tall, photogenic Ethiopian male. However, both are Jewish 20-something college students who grew up in small, isolated villages and are now living in Israel.
About 20 years ago the Israeli author A.B. Yehoshua wrote an essay called "Exile as a Neurotic Solution," in which he endeavored to explain why so many Diaspora Jews, for many centuries and in our own day, have avoided coming to live in the Land of Israel.
We couldn\’t help but notice that some of your most controversial last-minute pardons and commutations went to our fellow Jews.
One of the things that continues to astound me is the attention the world media pay to the intifada.
Trying to figure out the results of the Israeli election? Here\’s something that might help: compare and contrast what happened this week in Israel with what happened last November in Florida.
The night George McGovern got trounced by Richard Nixon in the 1972 presidential race, Barry Goldwater, whom Lyndon Johnson had clobbered eight years earlier, called to commiserate. "George," said Goldwater, "if you have to lose, lose big."
To facilitate pidyon shvuyim (redeeming captive Jews from secular prisons) we are commanded to go so far as to sell a community\’s Torah scroll. Yet it is hard to rejoice that Bill Clinton pardoned four chassidim from the village of New Square, N.Y., along with an alleged tax evader who donated megabucks to Israel. In contrast to the complex moral and ethical questions that grated pro-and-con during discussions over the possible pardons of Michael Milken and Jonathan Jay Pollard, there is something unequivocally outrageous in Clinton\’s decisions to pardon the four Squarer chassidim and the international oil merchant whose dealings prompted the Justice Department to allege, among other things, tax evasion and trading illegally with Iran.
Talmudic sages wondered how King Achav of Israel could have reigned for decades, considering his practice and encouragement of idolatry and every type of sin. They arrived at the answer that at least during his reign there was, if nothing else, unity among the Jewish people. Today we find deep divisions among our people, perhaps nowhere more so than in our attitudes toward Israel and the peace process. It almost makes you wish for the good old days of King Achav.
During the lamest duck days of his presidency, Bill Clinton hustled to cobble together a series of under-the-wire executive orders and pardons, but he was unable to secure The Grand Prize: a comprehensive peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
Marvin Himlin believes with all his heart that the Boy Scouts of America and the United States Supreme Court did right by keeping avowed homosexuals from leadership positions in the Scouts. \”Young kids coming into their sexuality are too impressionable, and I don\’t think kids need to be introduced to that.\”
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