A Rainbow Filter Can’t Fix This…

“Never forget” is a phrase that is easier said than done. As much as we would like to believe that society has advanced far enough to accept history as fact, and teach it as such, book bans are now commonplace…

From Berlin to Beijing, History Repeats Itself

Just one week after International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the world blinds itself to genocide. The 2022 Winter Olympics are being held in Beijing, China despite significant evidence of China’s crimes against humanity. In an extravagant yet deceiving opening ceremony, Dinigeer…

What the Colleyville Synagogue Hostage Crisis Can Teach Us

An armed 44-year-old radical jihadist British citizen named Malik Faisal Akram took several hostages at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas, Saturday, January 15. In his final phone call, Akram stated that he would free the individuals in exchange for…

Paper Golems: An Interview with Isaac Brynjegard-Bialik

“I always knew that we were going to be really Jewish,” artist Isaac Brynjegard-Bialik told me. His exhibit, Paper Golems: A Pandemic Diary is currently on display at the Dortort Center for Creativity in the Arts at UCLA Hillel.  “I’ve…

The Danger of Iran’s Continuous Pattern of Anti-Semitic Government Leaders

In 2016, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, appointed a 55-year-old anti-Semitic hardliner and Islamic jurist, Ebrahim Raisi, as chairman of that Iranian government’s reserve for terrorism, the Astan Quds Razavi. Fast forward to August of 2020, 60-year-old Ebrahim Raisi…

Bennett, Bibi, & Iran

Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu was ousted as Israel’s prime minister on June 14, 2021, after Naftali Bennett and his Yamina party formed a government with other right and center-right Israeli parties. While both Bennett and Netanyahu have political differences, both…

Jewish World Series

There is a famous scene in the 1980s classic film Airplane, where an elderly woman asks the flight attendant for some “light reading.”  Cleverly, the flight attendant hands her back a leaflet titled “famous Jewish sports legends.”  From actors to…

COVID Aliyah

In August 2020, despite global lockdowns, travel restrictions, and the rampant spread of COVID-19, I had the unique opportunity to take a gap year and study at a yeshiva, a program for post-high school students to pursue Judaic studies in…

Abolhassan Banisadr: A Power-Hungry President

In France, 88-year-old Abolhassan Banisadr died from a long illness on Saturday, October 9, 2021. After supporting Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Banisadr became Iran’s first elected president in February of 1980 but was shortly impeached and fled to France following an…

Jews in the Civil Rights Movement

On March 21, 1965, Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. marched from Selma to Mongtomery, Alabama in order to support voting rights for African Americans. Next to him stood Rabbi Abraham Joshua Herschel, a Jewish theologian who faced Nazi perseuction…