Free Republic

While accepting his award for Best International Film for The Zone of Interest at the Oscars on Sunday, director Jonathan Glazer spoke about the ongoing attack on Gaza, and not everyone was impressed. Glazer's film follows the life of a Nazi commandant whose house is just outside Auschwitz concentration camp. During his speech, Glazer addressed the Israel-Hamas war. SNIP Glazer took to the stage with producer James Wilson, both of whom are Jewish, and said: "Right now we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for...

Former Democrat presidential hopeful Marianne Williamson joined Rabbi Shmuley Boteach for a Facebook Live discussion on Tuesday in which she claimed leaders within the Democrat Party and the “media industrial-complex” conspired with one another in an effort to make her look crazy. During the interview, Williamson said it was “pretty clear” that once she made headlines after the first debate, she was targeted by the Democrat Party in an organized effort to have her removed from the debate stage. “The craziest things were said [about me]. There is a political-media-industrial-complex … and I think they have a way of protecting...

In full-page ad, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach warns of another Munich Agreement, calling one-year breakout time "catastrophic" • Ad says deal must not be signed before Iran's leader "personally and publicly repudiates all genocidal threats" against Israel. Popular New Jersey Orthodox Rabbi Shmuley Boteach took to The New York Times on Friday to criticize President Barack Obama's emerging nuclear deal with Iran, saying it could spell disaster for the Middle East region and the world. Boteach's World Values Network ran a full-page ad in the paper warning that the agreement -- which might be finalized by Tuesday -- could backfire like...

All terrorism is monstrous, but the murder of Rabbi Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg by "religious Islamic extremists" stands out for its unspeakable infamy. The deliberate targeting of a small Jewish center and its married young directors, whose only purpose it was to provide for the religious needs of a community and feed travelers, proves that those who perpetrated this crime are bereft not only of even a hint of humanity, but every shred of faith as well. The world's most aggressive atheists are more religious than these spiritual charlatans and pious frauds. When Osama bin Laden, whose beard masks the...

Few things are as in desperate need of repair as the singles scene, whose gatherings I address on a regular basis as I did last week on Valentine's Day. What you see is the typical scenario of the attractive women getting all the attention, the successful men drooling over them, and the "ordinary" people left to pick up the crumbs. Then there is the degrading spectacle of watching grown men and women walking around hoping to be noticed, or speaking to a member of the opposite sex while scanning distractedly to see if there is anyone "better" to connect with....

Arguments are going to happen in marriage. Two people living together are bound to generate friction. Indeed, having no disagreements at all might be a sign that your marriage has entered the dangerous "doppelganger" realm where you have become so alike that you are fused into the same person. Differentiation is a necessary component of passion, and marital friction can turn out to be as much a source of light as it is heat. But in order for the healthy sparks in marriage not to grow into a consuming conflagration, it's essential that you learn to fight fair, never hitting...

Few men are able to shape the world in death as they did in life. To do so is to so subsume your existence to a lofty ideal, with such complete thoroughness, that your life comes to symbolize the values for which you toiled. In the latter half of the 20th century perhaps only two men can be said to have so completely revitalized their communities that they achieved immortality by becoming the symbol of their nations. They are Martin Luther King, Jr., who offered dignity and self-worth to a persecuted people, and the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Schneerson, who...

The Israeli decision to respond forcefully to Hezbollah's assault on its soldiers and its citizens has been met with near-universal condemnation. The world is a lot more comfortable with an Israel that does not fight back. And so are a lot of Jews. Steven Spielberg's movie "Munich" made the argument that when Israel kills terrorists it risks becoming like the terrorists. But it is a specious argument that suggests that a country is more moral when it allows evil to triumph. Would Israel be doing the right thing by allowing murderers to get away with murder? But we are getting...

The miracle of Purim owes much to a superficial, womanizing male who set about dating as many women as possible to find the one that was the most beautiful. Ahasuerus is like so many shallow men today who reduce women to nothing but a slim figure and a pretty face. But in the end, the story of Esther makes it clear that the secretly Jewish queen was chosen not for her looks, but because she "found grace and favor" in the eyes of all who beheld her. There was a womanly dignity, a sublime feminine majesty, to Esther that the...

The American family is broken. It consists of constituent parts that do not cohere. It comprises husbands and wives who are not intimate. And it is producing children who are not secure. In hosting the upcoming TLC Television series, "Shalom in the Home," and taping the episodes that will begin to air in 2006, I have come to understand the problems that are tearing the modern family asunder. First, there is the work-too-hard burnout of the modern mother and wife. Working outside the home to provide the family with the all-important second income, and coming home to children who are...

Experienced a recent bout of arrogance and want to feel small? Then, come on down to Florida and immerse yourself in Hurricane Wilma. Having flown down with my wife and children to Miami Beach to spend the Jewish festival of Sukkoth, which mandates sitting outside in makeshift huts for a 7-day duration, with my mother and siblings, the most severe damage we thought we'd experience is cooking out in the Florida heat. Little did I expect that a most unlady-like Wilma would huff and puff, and blow all the Sukkos down. I am writing these lines in my brother's dining...

As we begin a new year, I believe that what the world Jewish community is most lacking is size, and the foremost challenge confronting it is the need for greater numbers. The number of Jews in the world has fallen below a critical mass, and the paucity of our number leads to its own tragic consequences. Foremost among them is our inability to defend ourselves. Does Israel really have a long-term future with so few Jews in the world? Who will influence and exert pressure on their own governments to support Israel, the Middle East’s only democracy, when the Jewish...

So, Donald Trump delivers a speech in honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day, and the anti-Semites are up in arms. He is not the man they thought he was. In reality, he never was that man, which was more a projection of their own ideology than a right assessment of his. As Sam Kestenbaum reported on the Jewish Forward, “Trump Gives A Holocaust Speech — And The ‘Alt Right’ Screams ‘Betrayal’.” How, exactly, did Trump betray the “alt-right”?In his speech, he said, “The State of Israel is an eternal monument to the undying strength of the Jewish people. The fervent...

Rabbi Boteach held the third annual Champion of Jewish Values International Awards Gala last Thursday.‘Is there a liberal in the room?” One couldn’t help but wonder this while looking around the large ballroom of the Marriott Hotel in Midtown last Thursday evening. It was filled with about 1,000 attendees of what could have been called “The Shmuley Boteach Show.” They were loudly cheering a succession of major conservative political figures outdoing each other in their support for Israel, condemnation of President Obama’s foreign policy, and giving voice to the fears about anti-Semitism at home and abroad. The formal name of...

Three Republicans, including an Englewood rabbi, are seeking the GOP nomination to run in the new 9th Congressional District. The three are vying for a chance to compete against Rep. Steve Rothman or Rep. Bill Pascrell, both Democrats, are engaged in a primary fight for the redrawn 9th District. Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, a talk show host and author of books including “Kosher Jesus” and “Kosher Sex,” told Bergen’s Republican Organization he wants to be the nominee, according to a report on politickernj.com. The congressional run is Boteach’s first bid for public office. Boteach and Rothman, a former Englewood mayor, were...

My friends tell me that I'm the Jewish Forrest Gump, a man who unexpectedly finds himself in strange and surprising situations. But the place I find myself in now surprises even me. I've just discovered that Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi is going to be my neighbor. Quite literally. In about a month. In New Jersey. I knew when I moved into our home ten years ago that the property adjoining ours was the residence of the Libyan ambassador to the United Nations. But for many years the large estate was derelict and neglected. Overgrown with grass and shrubbery, it was...

I was on vacation with my family in Iceland when my office called and shared the terrible news of Michael Jackson's passing. My wife and children were with me in the van. We could scarcely believe what we had heard. The children all remembered Michael fondly. He had given them their dog Marshmallow who is a member of our family until today. My daughter teared up. And while I was heartsick at the news, especially for his three young children, I was not shocked. I dreaded this day and knew it had to come sooner rather than later. In the...

The picture of the president of the United States smiling broadly as he met President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela startled me. Our president is a nice guy. Chavez is anything but. The State Department maintains that Chávez has attacked democratic traditions and has put Venezuelan democracy on life support with unchecked concentration of power, political persecution, and intimidation. Foreign Affairs magazine says that Chávez is a power-hungry dictator with autocratic and megalomaniacal tendencies whose authoritarian vision and policies are a serious threat to his people. In testimony before the US Senate, the South American project director for the Center for...

This past Shabbat my family and I hosted Rabbi and Mrs. Nachman Holtzberg, parents of Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg, the head of Chabad in Mumbai who was brutally murdered with his wife Rivkah. You'd think that a family that watched their son and daughter-in-law slaughtered on TV by Islamic terrorists would feel hatred and a desire for revenge. But what this saintly father asked of our many guests was simply their participation in rebuilding Chabad of Mumbai so that his son's selfless work would continue. What a shame Christopher Hitchens did not join us. It might have dissuaded him from penning...

The outrage over John Edward's admitted affair with a filmmaker transcends what we have seen with most recent sex scandals. This partly results from his repeated denials of the affair. Much more important, of course, is the fact that it took place while his wife was battling cancer. The two of them had already dealt with the tragedy of losing a teenage son, and the public is furious that Edwards caused his wife, who agreed to campaign for him even after being diagnosed with incurable bone cancer, more pain. Why, people want to know, do men who have it all...