James R. Russell

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Jul 21, 2024, 1:27 PM

Make your next holiday destination… sunny Afghanistan!

Shavua tov, a good week, gentle reader! And from the annals of latter day lunacy, your reporter is pleased to present the BBC's feature story tonight, "Afghanistan- wish you were here? The Taliban do." You'd think Afghanistan under the...

Jul 16, 2024, 11:37 AM

Mysteries of the Red Heifer

(This is a revised version of the Devar Torah (Bible homily) that one offered on the weekly Torah portion, Parashat Ḥuqqat, at Chabad of Fresno, California, on Shabbat, 13 July 2024. I hope it will be of interest to...

Jul 15, 2024, 1:59 AM

"Sh*t happens in Galveston, Texas," reads the inscription on my souvenir shot glass, in red letters designed to look like dripping blood after a gunfight. In fact not much seems to happen there: a hurricane over a century ago...

Jul 10, 2024, 2:25 AM

Haredim and the draft

Tolstoy was certainly wrong when he wrote the first line of Anna Karenina: Все счастливые семьи похожи друг на друга, каждая несчастливая семья несчастлива по-своему. "All happy families resemble each other; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own...

Jul 1, 2024, 12:57 PM

Another American civil war?

I've heard people on the left and right for a few years now threatening or predicting a civil war. If Trump is re-elected. Or if he is not. Sometimes they follow that up with something about the end of...

Jun 24, 2024, 3:23 AM

Armenia and Israel

The Republic of Armenia is a tiny, landlocked, militarily weak country in the post-Soviet Transcaucasus with few important natural resources and a population of only about three million. It recently accorded official recognition to Palestine and Israel reacted with...

Jun 18, 2024, 6:15 AM

Answering a critic

Alexander Pushkin wrote at the end of his poem "Exegi Monumentum", "Receive with equanimity both praise and blame/ And do not argue with a fool." The title is from Horace; the poem satirizes the apologia pro vita sua of...

Jun 15, 2024, 12:15 AM

Dreyfus was guilty!

Dreyfus était culpable! That's what an enraged Greek officer accused of the premeditated murder of senator Lambrakis yells at the prosecutor in Kostas-Gavras' movie, "Z", which is about the events that led up to the fascist coup in 1967. Albert...

Jun 12, 2024, 1:59 AM

The Old Hundredth: The Masoretic Text and the Intricate Puzzle of Psalm 100

Dear Friends, This is the text of a talk I'm to give tonight, God willing, for the Tiqqun Leil Shavu‘ot at Chabad of the Central Valley. I hope readers of the Times of Israel will find it of interest: This talk...

Jun 7, 2024, 10:45 AM

Gay pride in SF: Nothing to be proud of

The organizers of San Francisco's gay pride parade this year have banned the Israeli float, but have okayed pro-Palestinian ones. That was the news I woke up to this morning. How edifying. Except it's not really news. We've become...

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About Me

Born New York City to Sephardic Mom and Ashkenazic Dad, educated at Bronx Science HS, Columbia, Oxford, SOAS (Univ. of London), professor of ancient Iranian at Columbia, of Armenian at Harvard, lectured on Jewish studies where now live in retirement: Fresno, California. Published many books & scholarly articles.

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