David P. Goldman

How does it stand with the people Israel in the new year 5770? As James Kugel (a Harvard scholar of the Hebrew Bible) explained in a lecture at my synagogue earlier this year on Israel’s Independence Day, for most of Jewish historyindependence was an alien idea. Except for a few decades of the Davidic kingdom, the Jewish commonwealth always paid tribute to the surrounding powers”Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, or Rome. Israel still faces an existential threat, but this should not obscure the fact that the position of the Jewish people today is at least strong as ever before. Jews who have kept the faith in Israel as well as in the Diaspora have reason to look happily toward the new year… . Continue Reading »

The answer to the question, “Who is Mickey Mouse?,” is . . . . Continue Reading »

Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz defends Israel before the court of public opinion, most recently in this Jerusalem Post blog entry. He writes,Richard Goldstone - the primary author of a one-sided United Nations attack on Israeli actions during the Gaza war - has now become a full-fledged . . . . Continue Reading »

President Obama’s sudden decision to suspend deployment of an anti-ballistic missile system in Poland and the Czech Republic may be a response to Israeli-Russian diplomacy, I am told by often-reliable sources. Russian-Israeli relations have been improving at an “extroardinary” pace . . . . Continue Reading »

It was sneaky of The New York Times to trot out Leon Wieseltier to trash Norman Podhoretz’ latest book, Why Are Jews Liberal? (Doubleday 2009). Wieseltier was raised in an observant home and in his 1998 book Kaddish showed that he knows something about Judaism. But Wieseltier’s snarky . . . . Continue Reading »

A Spanish reader wrote a furious rebuttal to an old post about the growing antipathy Spaniards show towards Jews. I argued that as Spain became less Christian, it also became more hostile to Jews, and tha the Spanish left hates Jews for the same reason it hates Christianity.The Spanish reader took . . . . Continue Reading »

Normally I don’t quote myself, but this item from my “Inner Workings” blog at Asia Times might be of interest to First Things readers.Gaming the collapse of the dollar reserve system remains a favorite pastime of forex and commodity traders. Japan’s new prime minister Yukio . . . . Continue Reading »

In a new “Spengler” essay at Asia Times online today, I argue that the gold price is an option on the decline of American power. In purely economic terms, gold is a very poor reserve asset compared to even a rather wobbly and ill-managed currency. Only if international relations break . . . . Continue Reading »

Browsing Rabbi Dana Evan Kaplan’s new book Contemporary American Judaism, I note a great deal of ritual acknowledgement of “Jewish diversity” and not a word about Jewish fertility. That is a deadly flaw, for the sort of Judaism the author espouses will disappear if only because it . . . . Continue Reading »

Why should America support Israel in the first place? That’s a fair question to ask down here in Melbourne, Australia, where the United Israel Appeal of Victoria kindly invited me to address communal, school and civic audiences as well as a large number of smaller groups. Australia’s . . . . Continue Reading »