Honey is potent stuff in the Jewish world. Since ancient times, it has been a powerful trope for love, hope and promise, and it is the key ingredient of the iconic honey cake, which retains its High Holiday status to this day.
The world watched in horror earlier this year when videos went viral showing ISIS bulldozing the 3,000-year-old ruins of the ancient Assyrian capital of Nimrud in Iraq—a city so old it is mentioned in Genesis. The militants toppled walls and bas-reliefs, sledgehammered statues and used a bulldozer to overturn and shatter a majestic human-headed, winged bull statue that had long guarded the city’s Nergal Gate…
San Francisco, the gleaming mecca of all things tech, got its big break during another era of innovation: the Gold Rush of the mid-19th century. Before then, several hundred people lived in Yerba Buena, which became San Francisco in 1847, after the territory was seized by the United States during the 1846 Mexican-American War.
We live in disquieting times. It seems we make progress in creating a better world, and then some of what we achieve slips away. We overcome prejudice, only to find it has metastasized into new forms. That is the story of anti-Semitism today, and it is also the story of other deeply ingrained prejudices.
It will take a lot more than the Iran deal to make American Jews switch parties.
What happens when rabbis prey on people’s need for holiness?
In fact, the Iran debate isn’t about centrifuges at all.
