Features
YOU’VE got to give Abraham Foxman credit — he is an eminently adaptable creature.
Leave alone that his knowledge base and skill set as the Anti-Defamation League’s national director since 1987 are nothing less than amazing when it comes to anti-Semitism and discrimination, the ADL’s traditional areas of focus.
It’s his ability to change with the times and circumstances that makes Foxman so formidable a foe of anti-Semites, racists and bigots of all varieties.
Anti-Semitism and racism are constantly changing phenomena. They respond to any number of economic, political, social and religious forces, sometimes coming out in the open, other times slipping into the shadows, sometimes manifesting in violent ways, other times surfacing in peaceful, even democratic, avenues.
Foxman is neither daunted nor confused by any of this. Like any capable fighter, he adapts to his opponent’s moves and tactics. He has an encyclopedic memory and an experienced eye, and is very seldom misled or misdirected.
While he would be the first to acknowledge that during his 47-year career with ADL he and the organization have made a handful of mistakes, he is obviously unafraid of standing on his record.
Pierre Sauvage, the award-winning documentary filmmaker, celebrates the quiet heroism that contradicted armies of the morally silent in the Holocaust.
His films include “Weapons of the Spirit,” about Christian peasants who hid 5,000 Jews in Le Chambon, France, and “Not Idly By: Peter Bergson, America and the Holocaust.”
“And Crown Thy Good,” his latest work, is the saga of Varian Fry, a New York intellectual who arranged safe passage to the US for 2,000 Jews and non-Jews stranded i...
TEL AVIV — She can’t stay out of trouble there, but Asmaa al-Ghoul always comes back to Gaza.
A secular, feminist Palestinian journalist, al-Ghoul, 30, has been harassed by Hamas. She’s also been beaten and arrested by Hamas police for protesting its Islamist policies and suppression of human rights.
But unlike most residents of the impoverished coastal strip where Hamas reigns, al-Ghoul has been able to get out, traveling as far as South Korea and spending considerable time in Europe in...
BEIT YELLIN — Israel is one of the richest archaeological countries in the world.
Notwithstanding its small size, new and exiting finds are discovered regularly throughout the year. The variety of these finds has enabled archaeologists and historians to validate the intricate stories of the development of the country.
Artifacts as far back as the stone-age record a continual narrative of human habitation and a corroboration of the deep Jewish connection to the Land of Israel.
Despite these...
BALTIMORE — Four plain, brown notebooks among an array of colorful cards, games and pictures began Penny Barsimantov’s quest into the past.
The researcher for a nonprofit organization in Tel Aviv is passionate about music, which is how one day last year she stumbled upon some half-century-old notebooks that led her down yet a different type of search for information.
Barsimantov stepped for the first time into the Israeli studio of Hagi Marom, a product designer with whom she is collab...