Last month I blogged about Rep. Tom Lantos, the only Holocaust survivor ever elected to Congress, when he announced his retirement as a result of his being diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus. Tom Lantos passed away this morning in Bethesda naval hospital. He was 80-years-old. I feel fortunate to have had the chance to…
In a move that Al Gore would approve of for its energy-saving environmental impact, Jerusalem has agreed to turn off the lights in the Old City before dawn this week so visiting President George W. Bush can enjoy a better view of sunrise from his King David Hotel suite, reported AFP. Bush arrived in Jerusalem…
I met California Rep. Tom Lantos at the AIPAC Policy Conference this year. Rep. Lantos introduced Sen. Hillary Clinton before she spoke at her candidate’s reception at the policy conference, where I took the photo at right. Tom Lantos announced today that he will retire from office and not seek re-election following his being diagnosed…
No, there wasn’t a spontaneous mincha minyan at Mitt Romney’s religion speech last week at the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library in College Station. As Rabbi Amy Weiss reported on her blog, there was a mysterious man wearing a tallit and posing as a rabbi at Romney’s speech. The man was sitting in the section…
I can’t think of any street I’ve seen in the United States named for a historical date. Yet, Jerusalem has a street named for a very important date in its history — November 29th (Kaf-Tet b’November). Today marks sixty years since the United Nations Partition Plan that paved the way for the establishment of a…
President Bush just announced a joint decision between Israeli and Palestinian leaders to work toward a peace agreement by the end of 2008. The nature of the agreement, as well as what is at stake for Israel, is fairly confusing. Bernard Lewis presented a very well written commentary piece on the Annapolis Peace Conference in…
One more Jew who should have made the Forward 50 list in my opinion is Leah Kauffman. The 21-year-old Jewish woman who wrote “I Got a Crush on Obama” (over 4 million views on YouTube) now stars in her own video to the song she wrote and performs about Ann Coulter (“Perfected: The Ann Coulter…
Each year the Forward newspaper compiles its Forward 50 list of Jewish people who are “doing and saying things that are making a difference in the way American Jews, for better or worse, view the world and themselves.” And each year the critics come out to denounce the Forward for its choices. The Orthodox think…
I had to laugh today when an article on the Media Matters website was sent to me by way of my Google Alert for the term “Conservative Rabbi.” This has been an effective Google Alert that sends me any articles or websites that mention a rabbinic colleague of mine from the Conservative Movement. However, the…
About a month ago I sat in utter disbelief watching Michael Scheuer being interviewed by Bill Maher on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher.” Scheuer is the former head of the CIA’s Bin Laden Unit and the author of a new book, “Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam After Iraq.” Bill Maher raised the question…