End the Preoccupation

By Michael Brooks
Published on February 26, 2004

Israel advocacy on campus has become a front-burner enterprise for the American Jewish community. Attacks by anti-Israel campus activists, including a fair number of Jewish students and faculty, demoralize and often intimidate most Jewish students who are ill-equipped to counter these efforts to delegitimize Israel. It is a mark of the Jewish community's growing concern that more than 25 national organizations are now involved in training campus activists to defend and promote Israel and thereby inspire Jewish students to feel a sense of pride in themselves and the Jewish State.

Cherishing Passover

By Marisa N. Pickar
Published on April 3, 2003

One of the purposes of the Passover seder is to teach our children the story of how the Jewish people came to be. Passover is a history lesson taught not by impersonal teachers in a sterile classroom, but by our families seated around the dining room table. When done correctly, the Passover seder should instill a sense of pride. Because with knowing who we are, we should feel proud to be Jews.

Passover commemorates the departure of the Jewish people from Egypt some 3,000 years ago and marks the birth of a nation. This is as much a celebration of our spiritual freedom as it is a jubilation of our physical liberation from slavery.