Despite the depressing campaign of the suicide bombers, many Jews are recalling the birth of the return to Zion by commemorating the hundredth anniversary of Theodor Herzl’s The Jewish State. Its publication proved to be the catalyst which launched the Zionist Congresses and changed a small number of disparate groups into an international movement which … Read more
The Stern Gang : Ideology. Politics and Terror 1940-1949 (Frank Cass) by Joseph Heller Blood in Zion (Brasseys) by Saul Zadka Jerusalem: Backgrounds or Memory (Biblios) by Amos Elon Jerusalem: the Endless crusade (Century) by Andrew sinclair When Joseph Heller’s comprehensive study of the Stern Group (Lehi) was first published in Hebrew, it aroused the … Read more
So who, then, was responsible for the murder of Yitzhak Rabin? Yigal Amir, certainly. The General Security Services for their complacency, undoubtedly. But who else beyond the immediate participants of that black deed? At which point does the delineation between certain blame and political accusation become blurred? Indeed, the Brooklyn-based Jewish Press told its 350,000 … Read more
From the NNLS Memorial Service Monday 6 November 1995 Colin Shindler Today is a black day for the Jewish people, but as King Hussein said this morning, it is also a day of remembrance and commitment. It has been said many times today that Yitzhak Rabin was a man of war who became … Read more
RABBI YOCHANAN, A Palestinian rabbi of the third century, described the qualifications for members of the Sanhedrin: They should be ‘men of stature, wisdom, good appearance, mature, age and they must be conversant with all the seventy languages of mankind as well as some of the arts of the sorcerer’. [Sanhedrin 17a, Talmud Bavli]. Another … Read more
In September 1982, Erev Rosh Hashanah 5753, Israel’s Christian allies murdered over 700 Palestinian men, women and children in the Beirut refugee camps of Sabra and Shatilla. Like Kennedy’s assassination, many Jews will vividly recall what they were doing when the news broke and will not easily forget the pictures of the dead and dying … Read more
The outgoing Jewish year, 5755 has been punctuated by many events to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the fall of the Third Reich. The return of old soldiers to the Normandy beaches last summer through to the VE celebrations outside Buckingham Palace were occasions to recapture history. It reminded us that Jews are required to … Read more
This first issue of Judaism Today appears – ironically – in the aftermath of the Chief Rabbi’s criticism of the Masorti movement’s modus operandi within Anglo-Jewry. A nerve was touched and heat flowed. Despite the acres of coverage in the Jewish press and beyond, little light was shed on the important issues. Indeed, the epicentre … Read more
Some British rabbis believed the peace process to be responsible for the recent massacre of worshippers in Hebron. The tension amongst the settlers, they argued, had pushed Baruch Goldstein over the edge. The situation was to blame. In this way, they shifted any moral consideration from themselves and were able to circumvent condemnation of the … Read more
In a recent article in the London Review of Books, Edward Said passionately condemned the Israel-PLO Accord as “an instrument of Palestinian capitulation, a Palestinian Versailles”. Said emotionally dismantled the Accord and found little of value. “A century of sacrifice, dispossession and heroic struggle”, he wrote, “had finally come to nought”. Said gloomily accentuated the … Read more