Category Op-Ed

Lessons from debating an anti-Zionist

image - Liberal Zionist Mira Sucharov debated anti-Zionist Max Blumenthal on CPAC

Mira Sucharov’s debate with Max Blumenthal is on CPAC. In a previous blog post on haaretz.com, I discussed what appears to be an increasing chill factor in our Jewish communities. By way of example, I mentioned a then upcoming debate…

We must be able to engage in dialogue

While the conflict between Israel and Palestine plays out via an ever-ailing peace process, outside of the Middle East, the relationship is conducted by increasing attempts at silencing opponents. As far as I can tell, this silencing stems from great…

Trepidation of the world

“Therefore, the Lord, blessed be He, decreed that we count these days in order that we remember the trepidation of the world.” – Rabbi Moses ben Abraham of Premysl We count 50 days between Passover and Shavuot, officially called the…

Religious belief vs. pretext

There I stood, 13 and terrified. At Beth Torah Congregation in Toronto, on a bimah that my grandfather had literally helped build, I was chanting from a Torah scroll that his father had saved from their synagogue in eastern Poland…

Connect with “inner reality”

There is an elderly gentleman at a long-term care facility in Ottawa. I have not met him, but I have seen his photograph. At 99, he still possesses a spark in his eye. He looks much more physically robust than…

Why I joined the Academic Advisory Council

Amid calls for boycotts of Israeli products, institutions and the many minds behind them, and with increasing instances of American academics and writers being muzzled, a new initiative seeks to introduce some intellectual and moral clarity. As reported by the…

The rhetoric of Palestine denial

The intensifying Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations have caused opponents of a Palestinian state to revive former Israeli prime minister Golda Meir’s 1969 canard that “there is no such thing as a Palestinian people.” However, “Palestine denial” is less a debating point…