The all-night sessions, heated confrontations and threats of walkouts that marked the recent Wye Accord negotiations had their parallel 20 years ago, when the Camp David Agreement lay the groundwork for the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty.
When an important local rabbi invited me to his house for Shabbat dinner to discuss my column — which he doesn\’t like — I was appalled. How patronizing, I thought, to summon me to his home so that he can tell me, with home-court advantage, to change what I do.
God spoke to me once when I was 12 years old. Although it happened years ago, I remember it as clearly as if it were today. Revelation is a tricky thing. I am reminded of the Midrash that when God gave the commandments at Mt. Sinai, God speaks to the Children of Israel in a divine voice so powerful they are too terrified to hear anything beyond the very first word of the first commandment. Since even that was too much to bear, God arranged it so they only heard the first letter of the first word. The first word is Anohi (\”I am\”), and the first letter is an alef, which is silent. So the rabbis teach us that what the Jewish people heard when God spoke was the Divine Silence of the mitzvot. Within that Divine Silence, each woman and man experienced her or his own unique divine revelation.
About 10 years ago, give or take a year, I was invited to director Arthur Hiller\’s home to attend a reading of a work in progress. About 80 to 100 people turned out and listened raptly as two wonderful actors, script in hand, read the work in progress. It was a play called \”The Quarrel,\” written by two friends, David Brandes and Rabbi Joseph Telushkin and based on a short story by Yiddish writer Chaim Grade. I mean no exaggeration when I say that everyone seated in Hiller\’s spacious living area knew they were listening to a play that was special.
Is this me? Eight o\’clock on a Tuesday evening, I\’m strolling down the ordinary street of my town, carrying an M-16 rifle. Tonight, it\’s my turn again to do shmirah, guard duty, a chore required about once a month of every male resident here at Beit Yattir, the West Bank village where I live part time.
History never precisely repeats itself. I was cleaning up after dinner the other evening when I heard my daughter, Samantha, now nearly 17, on the phone; she was talking with a guy named Vinnie.
\”Vinnie?\” I said, as she hung up. \”I think we should be focusing on Jewish guys now, don\’t you?\”
\”He\’s a friend, Mom,\” said Samantha.
And to my surprise, I let it go at that because I wasn\’t sure what else to do.
What can be done to help Russian Jewry? Loads, according to Simon Frumkin. He should know.
As the new millennium draws near, how is the Jewish Federation preparing for it?
Fifty-one years after going door to door and soliciting funds to help the fledgling State of Israel get off the ground, Jake Farber is at it again.
Five years ago, a school group from Oakland laughed and jeered throughout a screening of \”Schindler\’s List.\” This fiasco convinced Steven Spielberg that many students needed careful preparation before viewing his film.
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