Deb Reich, at The Blogs

Aug 20, 2024, 12:12 AM

That Donald Trump might get reelected this November worries a great many people very much, because he is so clearly unfit to hold office. But might his unfitness actually be the point? Trump’s blatantly obvious and continuing decline into dementia...

Jul 19, 2024, 1:42 PM

The spirit of Lysistrata lives!

Literate Boomers and maybe a few other people who read this blog will know that Lysistrata was the lead character in an ancient Greek comedy of that name written by Aristophanes and performed in Athens around 1,600 years ago...

Jul 17, 2024, 1:37 AM

Free Antar the Clown

Antar the Clown. Courtesy, Palestinian Circus School

This is the guy I’d want teaching circus arts to my grandchildren. Antar the Clown (Mohammed Abu Sakha), a young man so engaging, caring, open and good-hearted that any child would bloom under his tutelage. Israeli authorities, however, prefer to...

Jun 10, 2024, 9:14 PM

Dear Ivanka: a daughter’s dilemma

Dear Ms. Trump Kushner, Where are you? Do you love your dad? Your dad is visibly losing it, in the most public way imaginable. This is increasingly obvious at his televised rallies. His rambling incoherence is humiliating him in front of local...

Jun 6, 2024, 4:31 PM

Homo Ch’ubris beware – the mouthy women are coming

What kind of person do you get when you combine “chutzpah” and “hubris”? You get Homo Ch’ubris, that’s what. (Pronounce it “homo ch-YOU-bris”. The ch part in the middle should sound like you have a bad cold and are determinedly...

Jan 6, 2024, 4:20 PM

Drop food, not bombs, on Gaza’s starving children today

There are two Israels. One of them is busy bombing Gaza “back to the stone age,” a cherished strategy promoted by various military and political leaders of the past and (alas) the present, a favorite with headline writers and...

Dec 2, 2023, 11:32 AM

The Uprising of the Mirrors

Mirror, mirror, on the wall, show me the Other as Myself… In the shards of your glass, shattered by guns, smashed by bombs, smeared as you are with the blood of innocents: Mirror, mirror on the wall, show me Myself...

Oct 20, 2023, 5:38 PM

Memo to the current leadership in our region

Cc: Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement (“Slaughter for freedom”) Cc: Benjamin (“Managing the conflict”) Netanyahu Re: Murderous campaign of October 7th and scenarios of cataclysmic response Item One: Do not do to others that which is hateful to you. (A core principle in many...

Apr 5, 2023, 4:53 PM

Fakr fi’lakharina: Tonight, think of others

A traditional Passover family Seder lasts several hours. Three minutes of that is about empathizing with the suffering of the Egyptians — the bad guys of that drama. Briefly, Rabbi Samuel N. Gordon, senior rabbi emeritus of Congregation Sukkat Shalom...

Apr 3, 2023, 9:42 PM

Partnership (not Zion) is the Promised Land

Well, the spring holidays have arrived, marinated in civil chaos! What a travesty! Mahatma Gandhi is supposed to have said, “Our only true enemies are in our own hearts, and that is where all our battles should be fought.” (At...

About Me

A native New Yorker, by profession a writer, editor, and translator, my passion after more than forty years in Israel/Palestine is to explore how we might craft a better shared future by discarding the paradigm of enemies – an obsolete social design, now highly toxic. Read more in my book, No More Enemies, available on my website or from online booksellers.

Contact Me