First Word

Every dictionary I have consulted offers an unsatisfactory (more…)

A movie made from the [Marvin] Neil Simon stage comedy. A couple old men that worked for decades together in vaudeville are to get (more…)

Yiddish, according to some, was a language designed so that jews (more…)

This is a modern cloak and dagger based on a true story. Twenty-five year FBI man Robert Hanssen (Chris Cooper) is nabbed for spying just before he would have retired. The movie depicts the FBI’s effort to catch him in the act of making a “drop” so that conviction would be certain. (more…)

Biblical scholars have debated the meaning and types of sacrifices given in Scripture. Calvin says there are two types, sin offerings and offerings of worship (Inst. 4. 18. 13). Aquinas maintains there are three: burnt offerings, sin offerings and peace offerings (ST IaIIae 102.3). Their division differs according to their emphasis. Calvin is more concerned with the purpose of the sacrifice and Aquinas more with how the victim’s carcass is disposed. Both have their merits (and demerits: neither seem to recognize the atoning element in all sacrifices), but for reasons that will become obvious, I shall follow Aquinas. (more…)

The premise of this film is very simple and very implausible. An aged former Nazi (Laurence Olivier) has “escaped justice,” ending up in New York. He has a stash of diamonds in a safety deposit box worth tens of millions of dollars. He wants to get them out and go back to safety in Uruguay, but he’s afraid he is being watched and might be robbed while leaving the bank with such a hoard. Put yourself in his shoes and guess which of the following plans would make sense to get the loot out of the bank: (more…)

Original German: Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam (”Golem: How He Came Into the World”). This is an early silent masterpiece. It is a telling of the most famous golem-legend, which takes place in Prague during the Elizabethan period. Using astrology, kabala, and invocation of an evil spirit, Rabbi Judah Löw (Albert Steinrück) succeeds in animating a clay model of a man. With this Golem, Löw is able to defend the jews from persecution by the Empire; in addition, the Golem (played by Paul Wegener who also directs) is marshaled to kill the Gentile lover (more…)

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Two Hundred Years Together: Russo-Jewish History, vol. 1 (1795-1916)

Chapter 1, To End of 18^th Century, fifth installment (see contents).

[G45] Since the start of the reign of Paul I there was a great famine in White Russia, especially in the province of Minsk. The poet Gavrila Romanovich Derzhavin, then serving as Senator, was commissioned to go there and determine its cause and seek a solution — for which task he received no money to buy grain, but instead had the right to confiscate possessions of negligent landowners, sell their stockpile and distribute them. (more…)

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Two Hundred Years Together: Russo-Jewish History, vol. 1 (1795-1916) (more…)

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Two Hundred Years Together: Russo-Jewish History, vol. 1 (1795-1916) (more…)

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Two Hundred Years Together: Russo-Jewish History, vol. 1 (1795-1916) (more…)

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s recent book, Two Hundred Years Together, covering the intertwined history of Russians and Jews, is published in two volumes. The first volume covers the history up to the 1917 Revolution. The second finishes the story as far as 1995. (more…)

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Two Hundred Years Together: Russo-Jewish History, Vol. 1: 1795-1916. (more…)

This was an HBO series aimed at modern young women that is now available on DVD. It was a six-year sensation spanning the new millennium. (more…)

Click over to this web site which is titled, Jews in Government, and note as you read that the list does not include state, county or municipal offices; neither does it count federal departments, high-level staffers and advisers, or judges on lower courts. (more…)

but for a reason opposite to that of the Semite-worshippers that are also seen to be grabbing their pistols.

My thesis is very simple: the term anti-semitism exploits an equivocation between race and religion that sets up the discourse for fallacious inferences. Moreover, the privileged status that this term has over others in its genre is itself an indication of the racism of those that recklessly purvey it. (more…)

In a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, the former Sephardi chief rabbi of Israel, Mordechai Eliyahu, declares that all Palestinians in Gaza (men, women, children) are collectively guilty for the Kassam rocket attacks on Sderot and ruled that there was no Talmudic prohibition against the indiscriminate killing of civilians during a potential Israeli offensive on Gaza. The rabbi reasoned that everyone in Gaza is responsible (more…)

You have heard of Sargent York and Audie Murphy, but how many have heard of Sargent David Rubitsky? Probably very few. But you should have. His feats would make York or Murphy blush in comparison. (more…)

We live in bizarre times. In numerous European countries it is crime to question the official version of the German Holocaust against the Jews. (more…)

We are all familiar with oxymora. Some of my favorites are: military intelligence; instant classic; educational television; French deodorant; peacekeeper missile; temporary tax increase; the Patriot Act. (more…)

This is what many Judaic settlers think of the goyim. WARNING GRAPHIC AND BLASPHEMOUS LANGUAGE.

Gregory Peck is a newspaper feature-writer assigned to write on “anti-semitism.” He decides to investigate the subject by pretending to be a Jew in his daily life, and observing how others react to that fact. Doing so, he discovers “anti-semitism” bursting (more…)

It is often thought, to borrow from Shaw, that Christianity and Judaism are two religions separated by a common (more…)

When I was young, I had a friend whose father but not mother was Jewish; thus, by the rabbinic rule, he was not Jewish; he was raised Methodist. But from his father he knew a lot about the Jewish ways. One thing I remember him saying was that Yiddish was basically a slang German that allowed Jews to insult (more…)

In this book, Jewish Prof. Neusner interacts with Christianity by imaginatively projecting himself to first century Palestine. The interactions are with the text of Matthew. He proposes the Torah as the shared “given” from which argument can proceed, and poses the question, (more…)

The Islamic question is on everyone’s heart and mind these days. There are two ways this question is posed in our circles:

1. What should be the Christian relation to Islam?
2. What should be the Judeo-Christian relation to Islam?

These are by no means the same question.

However, I want to propose a different question (more…)