Simply Friendless
Jewish Journal of Los Angeles
“The Ally,” a new play by Itmar Moses, is running Off-Broadway at The Public Theater through March 24. It is an excellent piece of dramatic storytelling that commands one’s full attention.
“The Ally,” a new play by Itmar Moses, is running Off-Broadway at The Public Theater through March 24. It is an excellent piece of dramatic storytelling that commands one’s full attention.
With the NFL football season over and the Kansas City Chiefs crowned champions (and Taylor Swift anointed the People’s Princess), March Madness not yet begun, and the Oscars still a week away, Americans can be forgiven binge-watching the sideshow that is the country’s evolving presidential race.
It was just a matter of time. Once Israel’s War Cabinet said “go” on Oct. 8, the day after the bloodiest and most grotesque attack on the Jewish homeland in its history, the timer on this latest war with Hamas started.
Here’s my recommendation to actress and disability activist Selma Blair: Fire your agent and publicist, immediately. You have received awful, but predictable, advice from your handlers. Straight out of the woke playbook of a spineless, soulless entertainment industry.
Welcome to Gotham. If you look up into the gloomy sky, you will notice the Bat Signal. Yes, it’s meant for the Caped Crusader, and not the Wuhan Lab.
On Jan. 22, twenty-four soldiers of the Israeli Defense Forces were killed in a single day — 21 in a detonated building in northern Gaza, and three more in combat in the south. That’s the largest death toll of military personnel since the ground invasion into Gaza began, bringing the total loss of Israeli warriors to 220.
In its short history as a modern state, Israel has been a Cinderella story where the glass slipper doesn’t quite fit without arch supports.
If you’re a Jew looking for sympathy in these sucker-punch days of hyper-antisemitism, find a way to transport yourself back to the early 1990s, a time when Holocaust memory—“Schindler’s List”; the opening of the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.; and observances of Yom HaShoah across America—was afforded largely universal respect.
The world feels like it’s on fire, with flames spreading in diverse directions.
It was in 1908 when New York City began the annual tradition of ushering in the New Year with the celebratory dropping of the ball in Times Square.
The year is coming to an end, but the fighting in Gaza will not.
For a people that purportedly invented, and now control, Hollywood, Jews are awful at making demands—as Jews.
For a people that purportedly invented, and now control, Hollywood, Jews are awful at making demands—as Jews.
Dear Mom and Dad,
In the clamor for a ceasefire in Gaza, there sure is a lot of ceasing on demand. A multitude of ultimatums, public outcries, and violent actions during protests that require arrest.
THE language of Jihad is confined to the spreading of terror. It is not an invitation to a debate or civil discourse of any kind. It forsakes the presentation of ideas in favor of mob veto, the silence of intimidation.
Desperate times call for degenerate measures. For American Jews, this would be a good time to call upon Phillip Roth.
In an ordinary year, this week, specifically the days November 9 and 10, would call to mind Kristallnacht—the night of the broken glass. Given the grotesque carnage in southern Israel on October 7, global Jewry is today mindful of a brokenness far worse than glass—the confidence of their place in the world, which far too many had believed was secured.
Hamas chopped the heads off 40 Jewish babies, burned families alive, gang raped teenage girls, and decapitated an elderly man. Oh, and they kidnapped a six-month-old baby, young children, and female Holocaust survivors.
Let that settle in for a moment. Moral revulsion is imminent. Assigning blame a no-brainer, right?
Get out your calculators. While you’re at it, a set of blinders, too. Israel’s imminent Gaza campaign is going to get ugly. If you’ve been paying close attention, the moral and mathematical problem has already been revealed.