Where do the relations between Europe and Israel stand and how will they develop? In a preceding book, Israel and Europe: An Expanding Abyss? I wondered whether Europe’s political attitude would also impact relations in areas such as trade, science, culture, and sport. Since … [Read More]
Manfred
Published in European-Israeli Relations: Between Confusion and Change, 2006 “For a very long time the Europeans’ weakness has been that so often somebody else has to solve their problems. Frequently the United States has had to do so. Yugoslavia and … [Read More]
In a general social context marked by intermarriage and cultural homogeneity among Jews, the Reform movement in the United States is growing rapidly, with almost nine hundred congregations having over 1.5 million members. In 2006, about fifty thousand new members … [Read More]
Published in Behind the Humanitarian Mask, 2008 by Manfred Gerstenfeld The few mentions of Norway in the international media give the impression that its 4.6 million inhabitants represent much of what is good in the world. The Global Peace Index … [Read More]
Interview with Tzvi C. Marx* The establishment of the state of Israel-and not the Jewish suffering during the Shoah-has catalyzed in the Netherlands a serious rethinking of the relationship of Christianity to Judaism. The theology that Christians had replaced Jews … [Read More]
The Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America (UOJCA), or Orthodox Union (OU), was founded in 1898. Currently the organization has approximately seven hundred American and Canadian synagogues as its constituents. In the public Jewish eye, the OU is chiefly … [Read More]
The late-May anti-Israeli resolution at the first conference of the University and College Union (UCU) in the United Kingdom launched a new round in the debate on boycotting Israel. This controversy was initiated in 2002, also in the UK. In … [Read More]
Interview with Ivan Ceresnjes During wars, Jewish communities often become scapegoats and victims of the combatants. In the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the early 1990s, the opposite happened. The Jewish community in the country’s capital Sarajevo extended humanitarian services indiscriminately … [Read More]
The Nonintegrated Moroccans in the Netherlands Het Marokkanendrama (The Moroccans’ Drama) by Fleur Jurgens, J. M. Meulenhoff, 2007, 176 pp. [Dutch] Reviewed by Manfred Gerstenfeld The indiscriminate mass immigration from non-Western countries to Western Europe over the past decades … [Read More]
Mingling Disclosures and Distortions Het Zijn Net Mensen: Beelden Uit het Midden-Oosten (They Are Like Human Beings: Pictures from the Middle East) by Joris Luyendijk, Uitgeverij Podium, 2006, 215 pp. [Dutch] Reviewed by Manfred Gerstenfeld From 1998 to … [Read More]