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May 20, 2013

Richard A. Serrano: Is Meir Kahane's assassin now a changed man?

Hannan Adely: Town raises Palestinian flag at City Hall

Melissa Healy: Genetic copies of living people from embryos no longer science fiction
Morgan Housel: When smart investors do stupid things

Sharon Saloman, M.S., R.D.: Hunger games: Eat more, weigh less, without starving

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Jews Inducted into Rock Hall of Fame; Anton Yelchin co-stars in New "Trek" film; Kutcher (but not Kunis) visits Israel; Jewish TV Star Praises Jewish Rap Star

The Kosher Gourmet by Cathy Pollak: WARNING: This WALNUT CAKE WITH PRALINE FROSTING, perfect for afternoon coffee, is addicting
May 13, 2013

Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Why the giving of the document that would permanently change the world could only be done in desolation

David G. Savage: Church-state, literally? Supreme Court weighing public school graduation in a church

Emily Alpert: Recession dragged down birth rates for less-educated women
Morgan Housel: The deep downside of home ownership

Peter Teffer: Will Dutch police soon be stalking cybercriminals on your computer?

Heidi McIndoo, M.S., R.D.: Meatless 'meat' can have its own set of problems

The Kosher Gourmet by Diane Rossen Worthington: Celebrate! This must-try appetizer is delicate yet has depth of flavor: Corn-Leek Cakes with Caviar, Smoked Salmon and Creme Fraiche

May 10, 2013

Rabbi Berel Wein: Be all that you should be

Caroline B. Glick: The dirty little secret about Israel's Arabs

Mona Charen: Hawking's Moral Calculus: The man and the movement he embraces
Morgan Housel: The biggest retirement myth ever told

Sandi Doughton: Eyes may provide new insight into brain problems

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : The Great Gatsby's Jewish Ties; Jews in the "Time 100 list" List; People's Most Beautiful Women

The Kosher Gourmet by Linda Gassenheimer: A sweet-hot meal: Pear salsa spices up salmon

May 8, 2013

Peter Ford: Why China is welcoming both Israel's Netanyahu and Palestinians' Abbas

Warren Richey: Obama administration quietly backs out of appeal over new contraceptive mandate

Fred Weir: At Kerry-Putin meeting, US-Russia relations thaw --- a tad
Amanda Paulson: Study reveals sad truths about community colleges

Harvard Health Letters: Evidence weak that zinc, echinacea are beneficial

The Kosher Gourmet by Leela Cyd Ross : Almost too pretty to eat, this colorful salad with Sicilian inspiration will tickle the taste buds and delight your visual sensibility

May 6, 2013

Edmund Sanders and Patrick J. McDonnell: Think Israel's objective in Syria is to weaken Assad or embolden the rebels? Think again

Brian Bennett: Israeli airstrikes may show weakness in Syrian defense

Michael Ollove: Millions of ex-felons, parolees and those on probation are about to be entitled to tax-payer paid health coverage
Karen Kaplan: Most men can skip PSA test for prostate cancer, urologists say

Kimberly Lankford: How to track down a lost life insurance policy

Dream of Mars exploration achievable, experts say

The Kosher Gourmet by Susan M. Selasky: EGGPLANT WRAPS are an easy, sumptuous and scrumptious meal

May 3, 2013

Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Human Courage and the Unavoidable, Disturbing Text

Steven Emerson: Attorney General Fights CAIR in Court, Lauds it in Public

Mediterranean diet helps beat dementia: study
Harvard Health Letters: When to be screened for a hearing problem

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Iron Man's Jewish Connections; Marc Maron's New TV Show; Martin Landau Grows Up with Israel; Shalom, Allan Arbus

The Kosher Gourmet by Diane Rossen Worthington: A sweet surprise for Mother's Day dessert

May 1, 2013

Jonathan Rosenblum: An Improbable Journey to Orthodoxy

Jonathan Tobin: Blame Obama, Not Israel for Syria Push

Kids, kittens the Same? With employee perks at struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo! it's hard to tell
Halena M. Gazelka, M.D.: Mayo Clinic Medical Edge: What you need to know about implanted pain relief devices

Sandy Kleffman: Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine

Jessica Shugart: When it comes to math, MRIs may be better than IQs

The Kosher Gourmet by Mario Batali: The celebrated chef on how high-maintenance ASPARAGUS RISOTTO need not be

April 29, 2013

Roy Gutman: Poland's new Jewish museum celebrates life, doesn't revisit Holocaust

Mark Clayton: Terrorism in America: Is US missing a chance to learn from failed plots?

Kim Murphy: Boston Bomber's 'Svengali' Revealed
Morgan Housel: He's rich, smart and old: Listen to him

Thomas Salinas, D.D.S.: Mayo Clinic Medical Edge: The safety of amalgam fillings

Harvard Health Letters: Tomatoes and stroke protection

Pete Spotts: Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA

The Kosher Gourmet by Diane Rossen Worthington: Swing into spring with lemon cream pie

April 26, 2013

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: The world is a mirror

Caroline B. Glick: Time to confront Obama

Clifford D. May: Defense in the Age of Jihadist Terrorism
Kimberly Lankford: New strategies ease pain of paying for long-term care insurance

Howard LeWine, M.D.: Ask the Harvard Experts: Too much ibuprofen?

Sharon Palmer, R.D.: How to feel your best -- with plenty of energy, a healthy weight and optimal mental and physical function -- without driving yourself batty

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom: Jewish Major Leaguers, 2013; New Movies and Comedy Show; Shalom, 'Lumpy' (Leave it to Beaver)

The Kosher Gourmet by Emily Ho : A bright and cheerful salad to herald the warmer months ahead

April 24, 2013

Steven Emerson: Boston Bomber Exposes Islamist Secret

Morgan Housel Admit it: No one has any idea what's going on
Harvard Health Letters: Can you get headaches from headache medication?

Kerri-Ann Jennings, M.S., R.D.: How to easily get more Omega-3s in your diet

Melissa Healy: Pot in a pill: All the pain relief without the smoke

The Kosher Gourmet by Susan Russo: Chipotle Chili Butternut Squash Soup is bold, zesty, hot

April 22, 2013

Ken Dilanian: Counterterrorism's future is unclear

US man departing country arrested on terror charges
Barbara Williams: An unorthodox but growing treatment in a 9-year-old's battle against cancer

P.J. Skerrett, M.D.: How to recognize a good whole grain product

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom: Teen actor Jonah Bobo in New Flick: Hunky James Wolk on Mad Men; Erich Segal's Daughter Writes Prize-Winning Jewish Novel


Jewish World Review August 4, 2008 3 Menachem-Av 5768

Tinseltown transformations

By Suzanne Fields


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | "Hollywood conservative" is regarded in most places as an oxymoron, and in Hollywood a "conservative" is an alien from outer space. But a few aliens are prospering.


Jon Voight, who bought the left-wing politics of the 1970s — and won an Oscar for his portrayal of an angry and embittered paraplegic veteran of the Vietnam War (playing opposite Jane Fonda) — is a thoughtful partisan for John McCain. He says Barack Obama's left-wing connections could be a strong bad influence in an Obama administration.


"Senator Barack Obama has grown up with the teaching of very angry, militant white and black people: the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan, William Ayers and Rev. Michael Pflegger," he writes in The Washington Times. "We cannot say we are not affected by teachers who are militant and angry."


A conservative movie star is no more entitled to attention than a liberal one, of course, but he cites his own experience as giving him the credibility to speak out. He was naively persuaded by Marxist propaganda when he was young, and he worries that the young dazzled by Sen. Obama's messianic appeal do not have sufficient smarts to see the dangers lurking inside the man's message, delivered through the megaphone of an obsessed and uncritical media.


Voight is focused on the youngest generation of voters who have been indoctrinated by politically correct propaganda; by and large this generation was never taught the importance of Western civilization in our cultural tradition. By zooming in on the fear that the senator's Chicago tutors did not encourage critical thinking and the ability to see the dangers posed by radical Islam and how this begets terrorists, Voight may be more prescient than he knows. The Gallup Poll finds the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee with a 36-point lead over Sen. John McCain among voters between 18 and 29 years old.


How many of the young voters took what they learned in high school and college to figure out the fundamental differences between cultures East and West? How many understand the perceptions that anchor the tough foreign policy that John McCain advocates for Iraq and the Middle East, and his lonely defense of "the surge"?


In "Smiling Through the Cultural Catastrophe," published several years ago, Jeffrey Hart, a professor emeritus at Dartmouth College, writes of the importance of the great books of the West to educate minds to probe the roots of democracy. He describes the dynamic conversation in the West and how it moves between "Athens and Jerusalem," between the classics of literature and the Bible from which our philosophical, literary, democratic, moral and spiritual inheritance springs.


This conversation — some call it dialectic — is not perfect, but its dynamic influences some of our most lasting ideas. Our freedoms are grounded in the openness with which society debates the important, the critical and the lasting.


Islam, by contrast, compartmentalizes its thinking so that powerful ideas propounded from different traditions, whether science, government, literature or religion, are forced into rigidly segregated divisions governed by religious law. Although many of the scholars of Islam preserved the classics and Biblical wisdom along with new scientific information, they ultimately lost the right and ability to debate: "A proposition might be true in science and philosophy but false in religion." Hart laments that American students are losing by default the ability to recognize such distinctions.


Nor is this a concern only in the United States. A recent poll in Britain, conducted by the Centre for Social Cohesion, a think tank, revealed that a third of Muslim university students in Britain say it's acceptable to kill in behalf of Islam and want a worldwide Islamic government based on sharia law. The Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom, based in Washington, shows how Saudi textbooks, freely distributed throughout the world to Saudi-sponsored schools, emphasize teachings of the Wahhabi sect of Islam that prescribes a worldwide theocratic dictatorship.


The war of ideas is as important as the war on terrorism in the debate over who is best qualified to be president. We'll hear a lot from the candidates over the next three months about their differences on school choice, vouchers and No Child Left Behind. Such specifics are important. But we should hear their different perspectives on the war of ideas.


Hollywood has an important part to play. A group of Hollywood actors, producers and screenwriters, who call themselves "Friends of Abe," after Abraham Lincoln, now meet to articulate a strong counter image to Hollywood's radical left, to show a proper appreciation of those who serve in the military that defends us all. Jon Voight and his like-minded are not yet a voice in the wilderness.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.


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