Category Archives: History

An Unlikely but Necessary Conversation: When Enemies Meet

It’s so easy to see our enemies as — well, enemies. What does it take to re-see them as human? Late in life, Erika Jacoby and Ursula Martens took an incredible journey. Not the sort of journey that takes you by jet halfway around the world. No, the sort of

Chants at Columbia U

Have Students Stopped Reading? Thoughts on Some Protesters’ Outrageous Chants

Source here I get why social justice-oriented college students are furious with Israel.  (I am, too.) I get why they are protesting to support Palestinians’ right to an independent homeland.  (I support that, too, though the boundaries are up for negotiation.) While I find it a deeply offensive, emotion-based tactic,

A Strange Past Returns Strangely

The last time I heard anyone utter the name, Przemysl, I must have been ten or eleven years old. In his thickly Yiddishized English, my maternal grandfather must have been telling me something about his early life. And I must have been listening more intently than I realized. I don’t