David Wilensky

Nov 27, 2024 | jweekly.com | David Wilensky

Sign up for Weekday J and get the latest on what's happening in the Jewish Bay Area. Israel’scabinet unanimously approved a proposal on Nov. 24 to sanction the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz. Under theresolution, no government body may communicate with Haaretz or place advertisements in the paper. These sanctions provide a warning to all of us who care about democratic freedoms — and a lesson for those few of us who lead news organizations. First, the lesson.

Nov 27, 2024 | jweekly.com | David Wilensky

Sign up for Weekday J and get the latest on what's happening in the Jewish Bay Area. (JTA) — Jewish parents in Maryland’s Montgomery County have no clue how their school district’s antisemitism investigation is proceeding. It’s been more than nine months since the U.S. Department of Education opened its Title VI civil rights probe into reports of antisemitic bullying, including at pro-Palestinian student protests, at the suburban Maryland district.

Nov 27, 2024 | jweekly.com | David Wilensky

Sign up for Weekday J and get the latest on what's happening in the Jewish Bay Area. The Torah column is supported by a generous donation from Eve Gordon-Ramek in memory of Kenneth Gordon. The first several chapters of the Book of Genesis are famous, colorful and mythic in their universalistic scope. There are the stories of creation, Adam and Eve, the Garden of Eden, Cain and Abel, Noah and the flood and the Tower of Babel.

Nov 27, 2024 | jweekly.com | David Wilensky

Sign up for Weekday J and get the latest on what's happening in the Jewish Bay Area. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to end the war in Lebanon through a U.S.-brokered ceasefire marks a rare moment of strategic clarity in his tenure. Now if only he would extend this type of rational thinking to Gaza, where he is apparently willing to sacrifice those of the 101 remaining hostages who are still alive, and IDF soldiers, in order to keep his far-right coalition intact.

Nov 27, 2024 | jweekly.com | David Wilensky

Sign up for Weekday J and get the latest on what's happening in the Jewish Bay Area. (JTA) — Our last thoughts before sleep and our first thoughts upon waking have a powerful impact on our minds. This may be why Judaism instructs us at bedtime to dwell on the central Jewish creed, the Shema, and shortly after we rise to recite the prayer Elohai Neshama, thanking God for our divine and incorruptible souls.