Leonard Fein
By Leonard Fein
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Opinion More Mystical, Less Statistical
What, after all, do we mean by the term “Jewish identity?” For a while, during the height of the Jewish continuity craze of the early 1990s, it seemed as if we were producing a whole category of people whose Jewish identity consisted principally of urging others to “have” a Jewish identity — not only as…
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Opinion A Jewish State, Or State of Jews?
The conventional explanation for Israel’s more controversial measures, including in particular the security fence now under construction and the new marriage law passed by the Knesset, is that these are responses to the ongoing conflict. (The new marriage law cancels the automatic citizenship hitherto accorded Palestinian spouses of Israeli citizens.) But underlying that explanation, there…
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Opinion This Time It’s Our War
Few people thought more or knew more about war than Winston Churchill. “Let us learn our lessons,” he wrote on taking up arms. “Never believe any war will be smooth and easy or that anyone who embarks on that strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to…
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Opinion The ‘Jewish Issue’ Issue
Some issues of Jewish life neither die nor even fade away. The most telling current evidence of that is the re-emergence, in recent weeks, of the “Is that a Jewish issue?” issue. Why, that is, should Jews — as Jews — care about this problem or that? Oughtn’t the Jewish agenda be limited to those…
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Opinion Under the Mideast Knife
And so the Bijani twins died after all. The world watched as a valiant team of 28 doctors and 100 medical assistants at Raffles Hospital in Singapore sought to separate the 29 year-old women conjoined at the back of their heads, an operation rarely undertaken on adults, never before — and not this time, either…
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Opinion Indecent Proposals
So sparse have our victories been of late that we walk a bit taller in the wake of the Supreme Court’s surprising decision last week on affirmative action. There was, in truth, no reason to suppose that the court would rule as it did, nor that its ruling would be cast as generously as it…
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Opinion Mideast Q&(No)A
To what question is “helicopter gunships” the answer? It is virtually impossible to disengage the emotions while the carnage continues. One need not join or even sympathize with last week’s Jerusalem crowd shouting “Death to the Arabs!” as they viewed the bombed-out bus to feel disgust toward the Palestinians and utter cynicism toward the peace…
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Opinion Bush’s March Of the Living
They saw the hair, and the suitcases, and the prostheses. They saw the tallitot and the shoes. And at the wall between the barracks, President Bush laid a wreath. I remember the hair, mountains of hair in a glass case, and over there, in the corner, a braid: one person. And I remember the shoes:…
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