Forward.com

A Synagogue Is No Place
 To Perform Richard StraussIn 1933, composer Richard Strauss was appointed by Joseph Göbbels as president of the Reichsmusikkammer, or German State Music Bureau. In 1945, Strauss declared that the Allied bombing of the Hoftheater, his favorite opera house in Munich, was “the greatest catastrophe that has ever disturbed my life.”…Read more

‘What Do You Want To Be If You Grow Up?’State of Siege [Users Manual] By Doron Goldenberg Gefen Publishing, 224 pages, $24.95. * * *Several weeks ago, I gave a reading at a cafe in Jerusalem. One woman there — a friend of a friend — had dark, curly hair and wore a blue sweater. At least, I think it was blue, though sometimes I recall it as green or even orange.…Read more

Good Morning, Ruppin Street: Okay, Now I’m Really ScaredShortly after dawn on my second morning in Tel Aviv, I heard a loudspeaker. Jet-lagged and groggy, I staggered to the terrace of my apartment overlooking the Mediterranean. Down below, a man inside a military-looking vehicle repeated a message that blasted out of a bullhorn mounted on the hood. My Hebrew ends at “shalom” so I desperately…Read more

Jew as Metaphor Quick! Crush This Philosemitism Before It Gets Out of HandSuicide bombers in Jerusalem, swastikas in Brooklyn, synagogue fires in Europe, so-called intellectuals shunning Israeli colleagues: Not since 1945 have Jews felt so threatened. Yet Jews have faced political resentment and theological mania for millennia. What’s new today is a subtler danger that the Jewish community has utterly failed…Read more