\”When I left Baghdad in 1951,\” Naji Harkham recalled of the day he left for Israel, \”I left with tears in my eyes. To me, Baghdad was good. I had so many Muslim friends who didn\’t want me to leave.\”
It was Friday night in Shanghai, a major linchpin of the Jewish Diaspora, and folks from all over the world were dropping in to wish Rabbi Greenberg "Shabbat shalom."
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.
The old-time Zionist religion had it that the only good Diaspora Jew was the one who made aliyah and settled in the ancestral land.
Rabbi Michael Melchior of Jerusalem has one heck of a job ahead of him.
Newly appointed to Ehud Barak\’s Cabinet, he\’s got the unenviable assignment of trying to make Jews get along with each other.
As we approach the new millennium, we often discuss the unity of the Jewish people, seeking those aspects of Jewish life that will hold our diverse communal elements together after the year 2000. Rabbi Joseph Soleveitchek has referred to our Jewish covenant as including our shared history, shared suffering, shared responsibility and shared action.
Fifty years ago this week, on Nov. 29, 1947, the General Assembly ofthe United Nations voted to partition British-held Palestine into aJewish state, an Arab state, and a corpus separatum, comprisingJerusalem and Bethlehem, to remain under the control of the UnitedNations.
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