Words of the Week

“In June 1967 Arab leaders declared their intention to annihilate the Jewish state, and the Jews decided they wouldn’t sit still for it. For the crime of self-preservation, Israel remains a nation unforgiven.

Unforgiven, Israel’s milder critics say, because the Six-Day War, even if justified at the time, does not justify 50 years of occupation. They argue, also, that Israel can rely on its own strength as well as international guarantees to take risks for peace.

This is ahistoric nonsense.”

Source: Bret Stephens, “Six Days and Fifty Years of War” (The New York Times)

Words of the Week

“To me, the Zionist project is all about love and about heart, and the mere specter of an American Jewish community bereft of those qualities—of devotion to what is without doubt and by far the most exceptional Jewish enterprise in 2,000 years—strikes me as nothing less than heartbreaking.”

Source: Daniel Gordis, “Why the American Jewish Distancing from Israel Is So Heartbreaking” (Mosaic)

Words of the Week

“When I was a child, I was told
that when Aunt Bella left Germany in the late 1930s,
she went to Palestine.
Which didn’t mean that she went to a country called ‘Palestine,’
because no such country existed.
As I grew older, I learned the details of this history:”

Please read the rest of my own poem “History Lesson in 210 Words” on the Jewish Journal website (and excuse the self-promotion!).

Words of the Week

“From the very start, Lilith positioned itself at the place where feminism and Jewish life intersect, where the x and the y axes—the abscissa and the ordinate of our identity—meet. (Or is it the Scylla and the Charybdis?)

In 1994, for Lilith’s 18th anniversary issue, I outlined the magazine’s origin story:

“While our Jewish backgrounds ranged from Orthodox to assimilated, and our politics pretty much covered the map too, we all identified strongly as feminists and as Zionists.” We believed unwaveringly in Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish and democratic state, while publishing writing unequivocally critical of some Israeli government policies.

This season, some have declared the intersection of feminism and Zionism unacceptable. Who has the right to confiscate either part of my identity?”

Source: “Intersections and Intersectionality,” Susan Weidman Schneider’s Editor’s Note in the current issue of Lilith magazine. Full text available online.