I had many great honors in the years I served as U.S. Ambassador to Israel. But the single hardest part of the job? The many funerals and shivas I attended. Often I was visiting after a horrific terrorist attack took innocent lives. Sometimes it was to mourn Israeli soldiers who fell in battle. Less painful,…
Days after 11 were killed in a mass shooting in a Pittsburgh synagogue, identified as a hate crime, the National Rifle Association returned to its dog-whistling tactics that many consider to be anti-Semitic. The NRA’s official Twitter account wrote, posted an NBC article speculating that Jewish megadonor George Soros will spend more money on the…
A Jewish school in Pittsburgh boasts one of the city’s landmarks: a Holocaust memorial sculpture, created by an artist from 6 million aluminum tabs that the students collected over almost five years. When the Community Day School dedicated the sculpture, called “Keeping Tabs,” the feeling was that such an elaborate effort was necessary to help…
Within hours of the October 27 mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Muslim-American activists sprang into action. Tarek El-Messidi, founding director of the faith-based nonprofit Celebrate Mercy launched a “Muslims Unite for Pittsburgh Synagogue” campaign on LaunchGood, a Muslim fundraising website, with the goal of providing for the short-term needs of…
Around the time my relationship with my now-wife Rachael took a turn for the serious, we went for a hike in the desert and talked about religion. Rachael is Jewish. I am Catholic. Rachael’s Jewishness was mostly cultural. (Holiday recipes, yes! Holiday services or prayers, absolutely no!) By contrast, religion in all forms has always…
President Trump last spring pardoned Dinesh D’Souza, the conservative commentator and filmmaker who pleaded guilty in 2014 to making illegal campaign contributions. D’Souza has been criticized even by fellow conservatives for his frequently racially-charged public output, such as his decision to criticize former president Barack Obama’s use of a selfie stick by tweeting, “You can…
A powerful split-screen image greeted those following President Trump’s visit to Pittsburgh yesterday in the wake of a horrific massacre that left 11 Jews dead. As the President’s SUV pulled up to the Tree of Life synagogue where the massacre took place, thousands marched through the neighborhood, chanting Jewish prayers about love and kindness and…
Pittsburgh’s Jews are a proud people. Squirrel Hill is the center of our physical and spiritual world. We are the living, breathing example of what it means to be an American Jew today: integrated Americans exhibiting outward Jewish pride. So when a domestic terrorist shot up my parent’s synagogue, he did so knowing full well…
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