Pondering the state of American Jewry
Yeshiva University (YU) is asking the US Supreme Court to overturn a lower court ruling ordering it to recognize a pride club for LGBTQ students. The courtcase goes back to April 2021, when some alumni and students sued the school for breaking the New York State Human Rights Law for refusing to charter a YU …
It’s a disturbing fact that not many of us are aware of the few hundred to possibly one thousand Jews in Kaifeng that make up the Jewish community of China. The sad fact is that they are being persecuted, and no one has been speaking up for them. And in fact, none of us have …
Tree of Life was a surprising attack, but now it seems Jews are attacked weekly, and sometimes daily. The latest antisemitic attacks are on a rabbi in San Diego, just outside his synagogue on October 10, and five days later, a man dressed in “Orthodox garb” in Williamsburg. It certainly isn’t helping the situation when …
Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on Rosh Hashanah of complications from metastatic pancreatic cancer. While traditional Jews do not blow the shofar when Rosh Hashanah falls on Shabbat, Reform Rabbi Matt Soffer of Durham, North Carolina, blew the shofar minus one blast, to signify that the Supreme Court was now minus one justice. Actor Mandy Patinkin, …
Because Joseph’s Tomb is in Nablus, a city that is under Palestinian Authority autonomy, visits to the holy site by Jewish pilgrims are fraught with danger. For this reason, visits are coordinated with the IDF, to minimize the potential for people getting hurt. What makes a visit dangerous? Why would people be hurt for visiting …
![Gershom Gorenberg (Joe Mabel [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)](https://eliyahumintz.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Gershom_Gorenberg_01.jpg)
Gershom Gorenberg, writing in the Washington Post, claims that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu weakens support for Israel within the United States. But the piece is so full of lies and distortions that one wonders that the Washington Post let it stand. Gorenberg’s main gripe is Israel’s new Nation-State law, but Israeli laws are not …
Israel finally did it: enshrined into law the basic premise that Israel is the Jewish State and its official language is. . . wait for it. . . Hebrew. Are you shocked? You shouldn’t be. Every country has a similar law. In France, for instance, French is the official language, even though a lot of …
We already knew that novelist Michael Chabon and wife Ayelet Waldman are not on Israel’s side in the Arab war against the Jews. But now Chabon has come out against Jews marrying Jews. Significantly, he did so in an address to the latest graduating class reform rabbis at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion …
President Trump made his daring pronouncement that Israel’s capital is its capital and while many were pleased in the Jewish community, the Reform Movement made a statement against the move. This was a real head scratcher. What? They don’t recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel??? And they’re JEWISH? Confusing. If we don’t have Jerusalem …
The Jewish Institute for Strategic Studies has just published a poll which suggests that 72% of Israelis think Israel should retain sovereignty over the Temple Mount no matter what peace agreements it signs, while 68% believe Jews should have the freedom to pray there. This is contrary to the current status quo in which only …