Hanukkah is, of course, the holiday of light, blah blah blah, we all know the story of the miracle of the oil. Except that I’m in a class on ancient texts and history, and having read the pseudepigraphal Maccabbean texts, it appears that the whole story is a little less rosy than I was taught… Read more »
I know, I know—I should be blogging about Annapolis, and the recent hubbub throughout the entire Jewish community about what happened there, if anything happened there, if what happened there matters at all, what Abbas promised or didn’t promise, whether Ehud Olmert should be replaced with Netanyahu, and so on. It all demands some incisive… Read more »
Sometimes, you see things that smack you in the face so hard you can’t even say anything for a while. The recent Saudi case revolving around the gang rape of a nineteen-year-old girl, for example. The girl was sentenced to 200 lashes. (She had violated Saudi gender-segregation laws.) Yeah. Saudi women are protesting, but the… Read more »
According to a recent article from the AP, Democrats place the final cost of these wars (in Iraq and Afghanistan) at $1.6 trillion—roughly twice what the White House has requested thus far. This is upsetting and of itself, but while mulling it over, I found a copy of a new book, The Victory Gardens of… Read more »
I have an embarrassing confession: I didn’t vote this past Tuesday. There wasn’t anything major on my local ballot, but I realized I’m still registered at an old address, and it didn’t happen. No major harm done, but I’m a little mortified. To perhaps assuage this, and to motivate me to send in my new… Read more »
I’m ready for some smaller government. Now, if you’ve ever met me (or read anything else I’ve written here), this might be a perplexing statement. How do you go from bleeding heart to…very not? Well, to start, you read Naomi Wolf’s new book, The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot. And… Read more »
You probably don’t have to think too hard to guess what my feelings are of the stereotypes of Jewish women as guilt-inducing shrews. I’m not much of a fan, to say the least. (For more on debunking that particular myth, check out Joyce Antler’s latest book, You Never Call! You Never Write!: A History of… Read more »
Do you ever have that thing where you get really involved with your own life for a few days, and you don’t read the newspaper or hit the blogs or scan the headlines of the dude with NY Daily News who’s standing over you on the subway every morning with the same interest or gusto,… Read more »
It seems that the question of communication versus righteous anger just won’t leave us alone. Frank Rich’s op-ed piece in this Sunday’s New York Times made me feel shame and rage in equal parts, and I spent the day indulging myself in various righteous media-related favorites, reliving furies current and present. I agree with Rich:… Read more »
The question of nation and religion loomed pretty large for me this week. I took John McCain’s comment that America is a Christian nation as further proof that he’s completely lost his mind (never mind any shot at the nomination). Jon Meachem writing a Sunday op-ed in the Times clearly differs in his opinion; he… Read more »
