July 2025
'zionist' contains multitudes
23 - 07/25 /17:57
~ By Rabbi Avi Shafran columnist for Ami Magazine ~
Am I a Zionist? Yes and no. Either answer is true. The word, something of a war cry these days, seems to have lost a clear meaning. In truth it has multiple. Teasing out each can help us understand Jews, antisemitism and the Middle East.
As a Haredi Jew—we dislike the too-often pejorative descriptor “ultra-Orthodox”—I don’t subscribe to the foundational principles of the Zionist movement that Austro-Hungarian Jewish journalist Theodor Herzl founded in the late 19th century. That movement, which believed that Jewish nationalism—the creation of a political state akin to other countries—was the solution to antisemitism, resulted in the establishment of the state of Israel. Read More…
Am I a Zionist? Yes and no. Either answer is true. The word, something of a war cry these days, seems to have lost a clear meaning. In truth it has multiple. Teasing out each can help us understand Jews, antisemitism and the Middle East.
As a Haredi Jew—we dislike the too-often pejorative descriptor “ultra-Orthodox”—I don’t subscribe to the foundational principles of the Zionist movement that Austro-Hungarian Jewish journalist Theodor Herzl founded in the late 19th century. That movement, which believed that Jewish nationalism—the creation of a political state akin to other countries—was the solution to antisemitism, resulted in the establishment of the state of Israel. Read More…
political theater
14 - 07/25 /17:34
July 1925 Tennessee schoolteacher John Thomas Scopes was put on trial for violating the state’s Butler Act, which decreed it illegal to teach evolution in any state-funded school. 100 years ago Tennessee law prohibited teachers from denying the biblical account of Creation. Our modern approach to education is to prohibit teachers from teaching the Bible’s Creation story.
Adapted from an article by David Mamet.
Scopes, like Rosa Parks three decades later, volunteered to stand as the defendant in a case designed to test the law. Scopes was found guilty and fined, the fine subsequently rescinded. Tennessee repealed the Butler Act in 1967. Read More…
Adapted from an article by David Mamet.
Scopes, like Rosa Parks three decades later, volunteered to stand as the defendant in a case designed to test the law. Scopes was found guilty and fined, the fine subsequently rescinded. Tennessee repealed the Butler Act in 1967. Read More…