You would think that someone as renowned as Albert Einstein, whose contribution to science in general, and to the US in particular, is unquestionable, would escape the plight of antisemitism. He did not. In a recently discovered letter from 1936,…
Every Jewish holiday has deep spiritual meaning. Hanukkah is no exception. On Hanukkah, we celebrate the miracle that happened to the Maccabees, who defeated the mighty Seleucid Empire and its allies, the Hellenistic Jews. After their victory, they cleaned the…
Today, seventy-four years ago, the United Nations decided to adopt the proposal suggested by the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) and create two separate states in Palestine—one for the Arabs and one for the Jews. The proposal, known…
A few days ago I visited Mount Vesuvius in southern Italy. In the fall of the year 79 CE, the mountain exploded. The explosion was so violent that it shot a cloud of fragmented rock and gasses to a height…
I have been told that the problems in supply chains afflicting the global economy have gotten so bad, and the prognosis is so dire, that some countries are considering shutting down international trade and trying to become self-sufficient. It is…
David Beasley, executive director of the United Nations World Food Programme, said that billionaires “need to step up now, on a one-time basis,” and donate $6 billion to save 42 million people “who are going to die if we don’t…
Sometimes I feel that we will never learn to sympathize or care. Instead of feeling compassion, we will become so alienated that we will destroy ourselves one person at a time until we’re all gone. If we consider our true…
“Pundits” and experts galore keep warning us that soon there will not be enough food to feed humanity, and not enough fresh water to drink. Remember peak oil, when a slew of “experts” warned us that soon we will run…
Next week we will celebrate Hanukkah, the festival that celebrates the victory of the Jews over the Greeks. This is the story that we tell ourselves each year. It is not the truth. The truth is that the Greeks (actually,…
I received an email from a concerned mother who wrote the following, “Today, grownups, too, are insecure and fearful. How can we raise children to be confident? What can we rely on? Laws are broken, basic morals don’t exist, lies,…
We need to understand the uniqueness of the current state of humanity. All over the world, a new system is emerging. In this system, we are all connected, unwittingly, unwillingly and irreversibly. The system has always been there, but now…
From east to west, the world is sinking into another wave of the coronavirus. Despite the vaccines and the booster shots, the future of the world seems bleak. Until we learn the lesson that the virus has come to teach…