Joanne Palmer

1 week ago | njjewishnews.timesofisrael.com | Joanne Palmer

We should have seen it coming, Abe Foxman said. Mr. Foxman of Bergen County is the longtime now-retired head of the Anti-Defamation League. As a child survivor of the Holocaust, he’s an even longer-time student of antisemitism (a position from which there is no retirement). He was talking about the murder last week of two young employees of the Israeli embassy, Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky; the pair was gunned down outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington.

1 week ago | njjewishnews.timesofisrael.com | Joanne Palmer

It’s a glorious spring. We just finished one of the most physically lovely (if unnaturally chilly) Memorial Day weekends in memory, and we’re heading to the intellectually heady, cheese-filled joys of Shavuot. But the murders of Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky cast a huge pall over everything, in ways that are both personal and communal. To start with, on the personal side, the two were both young and attractive. They were in love, and about to get engaged. And then they were shot dead.

2 weeks ago | njjewishnews.timesofisrael.com | Joanne Palmer

The Palisades aren’t particularly long, and when you compare them to other cliffs, they might not be particularly formidable. They’re very steep but run for only 20 or so miles and they aren’t attached to any mountains. But they’re stark, they’re dramatic, they overhang the Hudson, and in a way they gave birth to the American motion picture industry — which, as we all know, eventually decamped to Hollywood.

2 weeks ago | njjewishnews.timesofisrael.com | Joanne Palmer

We all know what Russian roulette is, and it’s nasty. The player takes a six-chambered revolver, puts a live bullet into one of the chambers, and spins the cylinder. Then he (and yes, always a he) puts the gun to his head, and pulls the trigger. There is a five-in-six chance that he’ll survive, but a non-negligible chance that he’ll blow his brains out.

2 weeks ago | njjewishnews.timesofisrael.com | Joanne Palmer

It’s hard but necessary to keep many different kinds of thoughts in your mind at the same time. First, overwhelmingly this week, there is beauty. It’s been warm but not hot, breezy but not gusty. The flowering trees have lost their pink and white blossoms, but they are all so very deeply, overwhelmingly green, all the rain has made the world so lush, that it’s like Dorothy stepping out of Kansas into Oz every time we go outside.