Marlene Adler Marks\’ first column for this paper appeared in March 1987. It was titled \”The Unwanted Visitor.\” It was about a rabbi who showed up to comfort Marlene as she waited in the hospital for her husband, Burton, to come out of surgery. \”It hadn\’t been comforting to me,\” Marlene wrote, shortly before Burton died. \”I couldn\’t handle it. There is a time when even a rabbi can do no good at all.\”
This is a slightly abridged version of an address delivered to a crowd of 2,000 people at a rally for Israel at the Milken Jewish Community Center, April 16, 2002
Here we were, 18-year-old kids who barely knew anything about life, and being entrusted with weapons that had the potential to save lives or to take lives.
Like grandma\’s pearls, handed down and worn in, I\’ve inherited an opera-length strand of worries.
The strong showing of far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen in the first round of France\’s presidential elections holds some bitter ironies for the nation\’s Jews.
Ironically, it may be because this administration wants to do the right thing on terrorism, while increasing support for Israel, that it now faces seeming irreconcilable goals.
U.N. Special Envoy Terje Roed-Larsen, as he walked through the rubble in the Jenin refugee camp last week, just three days after the fighting had died down, virtually accused Israel of war crimes and spoke of \”a shameful chapter in Israel\’s history.\”
As Israeli-Palestinian violence makes daily life in the Jewish state a living (as opposed to a virtual) nightmare, American Jews are raising the ante on expressions of loyalty. A rabbi recently told me he wants every Jew to travel to Israel this year. A lay leader puts his name on the list for every mission, but breathes a sigh of relief when each is quickly cancelled.
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