Forward.com

A Time for Mourning, A Time To RejoiceIn this week of remembrance and celebration, some people are having a hard time. The remembering begins with Yom HaZikaron, Israel’s memorial day for those who have fallen in its wars. It is a day of both public and private solemnity.…Read more

Before Independence: The Meaning of a Jewish StateWhat we knew about Israel back then, in the months before and in the months and early years after, was derived 10% or so from newsreels and 90% from Zionist youth movements, Hebrew schools, now and then a newspaper or a book. The world was different before television, and the first years of television were only a tiny foretaste of what television was to become, with its 24/7 coverage of just about everything. The world was different before the Internet, too. Today Israeli newspapers, frequently updated, are a mere key click away. Israel back then was mostly an imagining, and imagination offers more room for dreams, for milk and honey and utopian speculation or messianic conviction than does insistently graphic depiction.…Read more

Israel’s Post Traumatic Stress DisorderSuddenly it’s Syria. Somewhere between a rumor and a demarche, there’s talk of peace. Turkey’s the broker; so far, Bashar Assad seems willing and Ehud Olmert seems eager.…Read more

What Would They Write About Us Today?This week, this column celebrates its 18th anniversary. Or, since columns, lively as they may be, are essentially inert, their author does the celebrating. I’ve been rummaging around in columns past, and while many are tightly tied to then-current events, there are more than a few that continue to resonate.…Read more

The Truth of the MatterHarvard’s motto is “Veritas” — truth. The motto of Brandeis is “Truth Unto Its Innermost Parts”; Yale’s is “Lux et Veritas,” light and truth (and the same for the University of Indiana); and Johns Hopkins goes with “Veritas Vos Liberabit,” the truth shall make you free.…Read more