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May 9, 2008

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: Reverence, Yes; Worship, No

Mona Charen: Did Israel Drive Out the Arabs 60 Years Ago?

JWisdom: Ultimate opportunities by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky

May 8, 2008

Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Israel at 3,500+

Jonathan Tobin: Still Fighting the Same War

Steven Plaut: How ‘nakba’ proves the fiction of a Palestinian Nation

JWisdom: Taking Israel for Granted? by Rabbi Mordechai Becher

May 7, 2008

Rabbi Hillel Goldberg: Israel is irrelevant to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Dion Nissenbaum: Latest Olmert scandal could derail efforts to force Israel's compromises

JWisdom: My Inner Ventriloquist by Sara Yoheved Rigler

May 6, 2008

Caroline B. Glick: Anti-Zionism at 60

The Kosher Gourmet By Ethel G. Hofman: In honor of Israel's 60th anniversary, the former president of the International Association of Culinary Professionals, whose members included the likes of Julia Child, is back with a smorgasbord featuring the taste and essence of the Jewish homeland

JWisdom: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith by Rabbi Nosson Scherman: Jewish Deer in Nazi Headlights

May 5, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Busy work

Jonathan Mark: Remarkable half-century old Mike Wallace interview with Abba Eban puts current anti-Israel sentiment into perspective

May 2, 2008

Rabbi Berel Wein: Rote religiosity

Caroline B. Glick: Whitewashing Hamas

JWisdom: Parent trap?

May 1, 2008

David Zwiebel: Faith communities can learn from Orthodox Jews in stimulating private philanthropy for religious education

George Friedman and Peter Zeihan of Stratfor: The Shift Toward an Israeli-Syrian Agreement

JWisdom: It's time to wake up by Rebbetzin Esther Jungreis

April 30, 2008

Jonathan Tobin: Pennsylvania's Democratic slugfest may leave some Jewish votes up for grabs

The Kosher Gourmet by Linda Gassenheimer: Fresh herbs, sauteed veal and tiny creamer potatoes makes a light spring dinner

JWisdom: How to Build a Mentch by Rabbi Mordechai Becher

April 29, 2008

Daniel Pipes: Barack Obama's Muslim Childhood

Joel Brinkley: On human rights, the U.N. once again strikes out

JWisdom: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith by Rabbi Nosson Scherman: When The Truth is Unbelievable

April 28, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q: I'm often stuck in the doctor's waiting room for hours! Doesn't he owe me something for my wasted time?

Steven Emerson: New U.S. government policy advises agencies to avoid using some of the very same words that make up terror groups' names

JWisdom: Why You & I Never Die: A Jewish View of Immortality, Part I by Rabbi David Aaron

April 25, 2008

Rabbi Mitchell Wohlberg: Schadenfreude isn't kosher for Passover --- or at any other time

Rabbi Berel Wein: The secret of how the data bank of memory is transferred from one generation to the next

JWisdom: Stepping Up to A Higher Spiritual Life by Rabbi Lawrence Kelemen, Part III

April 24, 2008

Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: The successful failure

Fred Burton and Scott Stewart of Stratfor: Placing the terrorist threat to the food supply in perspective

JWisdom: Stepping Up to A Higher Spiritual Life by Rabbi Lawrence Kelemen, Part II

April 23, 2008

Connie Ogle: An intricate game of a novel

Jonathan Tobin: Making Sense of the 'J Street' Jive

JWisdom: Stepping Up to A Higher Spiritual Life by Rabbi Lawrence Kelemen

April 22, 2008

Jonathan Rosenblum: Why Israel's 'Leaven law' matters

Caroline B. Glick: Obama the Savior

April 18, 2008

Rabbi Harvey Belovski: Multimedia tool of antiquity

Caroline B. Glick: Revealed Truths vs. revealed lies

JWisdom: More than miracles by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky

April 17, 2008

Rabbi Avi Shafran: Deconstructing Dayeinu

Rabbi Elazar Meisels: Is innovation at the Seder a slap at tradition?

JWisdom: Discovering Your Divine Mission, Part III by Rabbi David Aaron

April 16, 2008

Jonathan Tobin: A Prayer for Sderot's Children

Ethel G. Hofman: Sumptuous Seder

JWisdom: The Divine is in the details by Rabbi Mordechai Becher

April 15, 2008

Rabbi Dovid Zauderer: Let Charlton Heston Go!

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Jimma, tyranny's enabler

JWisdom: Relationships: Beyond Mars & Venus, Part IV by Dr. Lisa Aiken

April 14, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: The Snitching Supervisor

Jonathan Tobin: Forget the Fun and Games!

JWisdom: Sincerity is Valued Most by Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski, M.D.

April 11, 2008

Rabbi David Gutterman: A Mystery in the Middle East

Caroline B. Glick: Why Ahmadinejad smiles

JWisdom: Elevated illness by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky

April 10, 2008

Stratfor Intelligence Briefing by George Friedman: A Mystery in the Middle East

The Kosher Gourmet By Steve Petusevsky: The spring elegance of asparagus

JWisdom: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith by Rabbi Nosson Scherman: The Power of Rational Lies

April 9, 2008

Michael Feldberg: An all but forgotten Colonial doctor who put his Jewish values before his life

Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkel's "Everything's Relative" gets philosophical

JWisdom: Four Rabbis in Bnei Brak by Rabbi Mordechai Becher

April 8, 2008

Caroline Glick: Covering for the enemy

Elliot B. Gertel: 'House' goes Hasidic

JWisdom: Relationships: Beyond Mars & Venus, Part III by Dr. Lisa Aiken

April 7, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q: I have a translating business. Recently someone asked me to translate some financial documents that are clearly forged. Should I agree?

Jonathan Rosenblum : Israel is unwittingly helping to fuel the international campaign of delegitimization against it

JWisdom: Matzah and leaven as a life philosophy by Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski, M.D.

April 4, 2008

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: The Mystery of Suffering

Caroline B. Glick: Fear of democracy

JWisdom: Dirty Jews by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky

April 3, 2008

Rabbi Y. Y. Rubinstein: Parents --- and the children who would be them

The Kosher Gourmet by Kathy Manweiler: Tempted by restaurant dressings? Don't be. Here are recipes that can be made at home, healthier!

JWisdom: The importance of retaining a 'slave mentality' by Rabbi Mordechai Becher

April 2, 2008

Mitch Albom: Child abuse, disguised as faith

Jonathan Tobin: Unreasonable Accommodations

JWisdom: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith with Rabbi Nosson Scherman: Eliminating Jewish Influence over Germans

March 22, 2007

J-Rhythms with Avraham Rosenblum: JWR's cutting-edge music program showcasing performers -- singers, song writers, musicians, and bands -- who learn and live the Torah lifestyle (OUR NEWEST IGODCAST !)

Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review March 3, 2008 / 26 Adar I 5768

A conservative for all seasons

By Paul Greenberg


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Today's America has quite a different political climate from the one into which William Frank Buckley was born November 24, 1925, mainly because he made the difference.


It was an America in which the conservative philosophy could scarcely be called a philosophy; it was more like a relic under glass, its skeletal remains rolled out now and then for an occasional autopsy by Walter Lippmann or a funeral mass under the direction of George Santayana. Any distinction between conservative thought and right-wing nuttism, the holy and profane, had long ago blurred into inconsequentiality. Those bones had about as much chance of living again as Robert A. Taft had of being elected president of the United States.


By 1950, the cultivated Lionel Trilling, one of the few members of the professoriate who had some reverence for the old ways, could observe: "In the United States at this time liberalism is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition. For it is the plain fact that there are no conservative or reactionary ideas in general circulation."


Professor Trilling's diagnosis was all too accurate. Oh, there was still a conservative impulse in American politics after the second Great War — "perhaps even stronger than some of us know," the professor admitted. But there was no extant conservative thought, he opined, only "irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas." That comment was more than a diagnosis; it could have been an epitaph.


That was the valley of dry bones into which strode a young student at Yale — Buckley, Wm. F. Jr., of the Connecticut and oil Buckleys — and which he proceeded to bring to life despite the best efforts of academe to discourage him. It's not that Bill Buckley was present at the creation of the conservative revival; he pretty much created it, beginning at Yale.


This obstreperous young Edwardian, complete with the manners and accent of his rarefied class, outpointed Yale's stultified bureaucracy at every opportunity. This snooty caricature of all that Yale was solemnly dedicated to extirpating reacted to its solemn efforts by compiling a best-selling catalogue of its dull gray sins. Instead of being cowed like a proper undergraduate eager for the system's approval, young Buckley fought back with surprising zest. The result was his "God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of 'Academic Freedom.' "


The title said it all, but Buckley being Buckley even then, he expounded on his theme at a sesquipedalian length. Which was enough to reduce Yale's McGeorge Bundy, who would go on to become the architect of the Vietnam War and other disasters, to the sputtering rage of all capital-L Liberals when they're pinned like butterflies to a board, or rather like drab moths. It was just the sort of reaction Buckley thrived on throughout his career. (Years later, he would orchestrate the excommunication of the John Birch Society from the respectable right with the same touch.)


Buckley would go on to many another triumph, from his founding of National Review to his innumerable columns, essays, novels, books, travels, grand adventures and grander spoofs. My favorite among his book titles was the one he gave his history of the National Review. It's enough to warm the heart, and gut, of any editorial page editor: "Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription." As one of his critics noted, he had a talent unusual in someone of deep political convictions; he was unlikely to "ruin a dinner party." Quite the contrary. Where Buckley was, there was festivity.


If you seek his monument today, just look around. Conservatism is now the dominant American political philosophy, and liberalism the series of irritable mental gestures. But nothing disorganizes an army or cause like victory. Conservatism's intellectual dominance now shows in its smug self-satisfaction, its various cracks and fault lines, its slow subsidence from fighting idea to just reflex, its progression from courage to hubris. And there is no new Buckley in sight, someone who could both mobilize and re-invigorate the old true ideas, even while entertaining us all. But the sea change i American ideas that he presided over is unmistakable.


Between them, William F. Buckley in "G-d and Man at Yale," and his friend, mentor and conscience, Whittaker Chambers in "Witness," made a revolution in American political thought and action even if few could see it coming. It was Buckley's National Review that midwifed the intellectual revolution that preceded the popular one, as intellectual revolutions do. His wit, promise and general lilt overlay a steely mind and will that was Roman in the sense of both the Republic and the Church. What a rarity he was, unfortunately. Something tells me we have only begun to miss William F. Buckley Jr.

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