Lance Armstrong proved surprisingly poor at backpedaling. His stone-faced, reluctant regret made many who watched the interview wonder if this was an illness. Why did this man mow down associates, besmirch employees, lie, cheat and bully his way to the top of a sport he is now insouciantly tearing down around him?
The majority of Americans are supportive of Israel. Still, for good reasons, many in Jewish and pro-Israel communities are deeply anxious about both the security of Israel and the future of the U.S.-Israel relationship.
In my last column, I made the case that if there is no God who declares murder wrong, murder is not, in fact, wrong. While human beings can believe that murder is wrong, without God, right and wrong are our moral opinions, not moral facts.
There is a lot of talk about the fiscal cliff — the self-imposed Jan. 1 deadline by which time a budget agreement must be passed and signed or there will be automatic cuts to defense and social programs of more than $1 trillion.
I have celebrated Shabbat several times at Manhattan’s B’nai Jeshurun synagogue, affectionately known as BJ.
On October 8, 2012, a handwritten letter was set for auction on e-bay. It sold, 10 days later, with a winning bid of over $3M. The handwritten letter was penned by Albert Einstein to Jewish philosopher Eric B. Gutkind in January 1954, a year before Einstein’s death. In the letter, the Nobel Prize winning physicist called religion childish and made light the idea of Jewish “chosenness.”
A famous scholar of American Jewish life once observed that we “earn like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans”. We are committed to building a just and compassionate society and want our nation to provide a safety net with basic social services, even if we might not personally benefit from such programs.
Dear Dr. Afifi, Many of us involved in global contacts between leaders of the world\’s major religions seek to understand the new Egyptian government views about non-Muslims.
Jewish voters know the scene well. Politicians show up at our synagogues, community events and Jewish homes for the aging—all talking up “Jewish values,” all trying to speak the language of the Jewish community.
It gets dark early in winter, so by the time you start to walk home, you’re already dipping into twilight. Your breath is a ribbon of fog against the silver-blue glare of the atmosphere, and your legs are heavy in the wet snow boots splattered with the sludge that flies off the wheels of buses and trucks and cramped, orange taxis swerving in and out of traffic as you count the first street lights to come alive.
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