Philologos
National News
- For Madoff’s Victims, Here’s a Guide to the Complex World of Legal Restitution
- In the Courtroom: Torment and Dante’s Hell
- Once Labeled An AIPAC Spy, Larry Franklin Tells His Story
Community News
- A ‘Jewish Missionary’ Takes On Hunger
- Judge: Kosher Company Illegally Coerced Workers Before Union Election
- Survivors’ Hopes Dashed as NY Assembly Adjourns Without Sex Abuse Vote
International News
- Franz Molnar’s Heirs Fight Over His Bank Account, And Their Identity
- Harmony Silenced at Egyptian Music Fest
- Prague Conference May Be Last Chance To Settle Holocaust Property Claims
Israel News
- Growing Gulf Between U.S. And Israeli Jews on Obama
- Some See Extended Olive Branch For Israel In Ross Appointment to NSC
- Why Defining ‘Natural Growth’ Is So Confusing, On Purpose
Arts & Culture
- From the Kol Israel Orchestra to a Pygmy Choir
- A Climb, a Crime and a Debut Novel
- Allowing the Yetzer Tov To Win
- Man’s (Comedic) Search for Meaning
- What do the Egg, the Swan and the Ant Have in Common?
- ‘Settling’ the Score
Fast Forward
- Forget the Game... How’s the Grub?
- Art Pop Indie Rock Meets Midrash
- Pioneer Songs, Revisited
- Camp in the Catskills: A Summer Tradition
- Moroccan Tradition
- Swine of the Times
The Shmooze
- Not ‘Far’ From Her Roots
- Historic Breakaway
- Disney Channel Goes Hebrew
- Shimon Peres, Songwriter?
- Surf’s Up
- Urban Kibbutz Puts Down Roots
Forward Forum
- In Iran Elections, Hezbollah Loses — Will Israel Too?
- Gilad Shalit’s Plight, and Israel’s Dilemma
- A Fourth of Jew-ly Celebration
- Sharansky Inherits a House Divided
- Actions Speak Louder Than (Even Ugly) Words
- Jewish Peoplehood Denied, While Israel’s Foes Applaud
Editorial
‘Settling’ the Score
By Philologos
In a long opinion piece column in the June 22 New York Times, New York University professor Tony Judt — who in recent years has been only slightly better-disposed toward the State of Israel than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — writes about the settlements in the occupied territories. Essentially, he claims, they are a continuation of the same “settler myth” that energized Zionism from its inception: a myth that once, in pre-1967 Israel, centered on the “settlements” known as kibbutzim. Now, Judt writes, “the settler myth has been transposed somewhere else — to the Palestinian lands seized in war in 1967 and occupied illegally ever since.”Read More
On the Trail of Deep Throat
By Philologos
Walter Askinas writes from Boynton Beach, Fla.: “My late father, born in Kovno Gubernya [the tsarist province of Kaunas in Lithuania], used to say about someone whose actions he deplored, ‘Er meg zakh shemn in vaytn haldz.’ I always understood exactly what he meant, but not the origin of the expression. Can you elucidate it?”Read More
Calling the Faithful To Witness
By Philologos
‘I am a Christian,” President Obama declared in his June 4 address in Cairo, “but my father came from a Kenyan family that includes generations of Muslims. As a boy, I spent several years in Indonesia and heard the call of the azaan (sic) at the break of dawn and the fall of dusk.”Read More
Working Ourselves Into a Real State
By Philologos
The term “Jewish state” has been much in the news lately in two different but clearly related contexts. The first is the demand of Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, that the leaders of the Palestinian Authority recognize Israel as “a Jewish state” before Israeli-Palestinian negotiations resume. The second is the Israeli Knesset’s passing on a first vote of a proposed bill (which now has to go to committee and be returned to the Knesset floor for a second and third vote before it can pass into law) that would make a criminal offense of “the denying of Israel as a democratic and Jewish state” if such a denial “is reasonably likely to lead to actions of hatred, contempt or disloyalty to the state, its authorities, or its lawfully established legal institutions.”Read More
Darkness Thickens As My Head Changes
By Philologos
If this week’s column strikes some of you as rather technical, you can blame Cantor David Nemtzov of Willowdale, Ontario, for a question he asked about my column of the May 8 issue, in which I pointed out that the Hebrew word ta’am, “taste,” is shortened to tam in Yiddish by the elision of its glottal stop.Read More
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