Joseph C. Kaplan, at The Blogs

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Aug 30, 2024, 11:55 PM

An Important, and Remarkable, Correspondence

In an age of ephemeral communication – email and texts, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok – I cherish the fact that I lived for many years in an epistolary age of hand- and type-written letters, often delivered by snail mail. This type of correspondence, after being...

Aug 9, 2024, 11:38 PM

Two Weeks in Europe

My wife, Sharon, and I recently returned from a 10-day tour of Central Europe — Budapest to Bratislava to Vienna to Prague, with some additional stops in between. Although we have almost always traveled independently and handled all arrangements on our own, this was quite...

Jul 5, 2024, 12:24 AM

Seventy Faces of Column Writing

My brother-in-law Monty, who always enjoys telling a good joke, sent the following meme to a family group: “The fact that there is a highway to hell and only a stairway to heaven says a lot about anticipated traffic numbers.” In addition to smiley face...

Jun 28, 2024, 11:48 AM

It’s Just Nuts

When I transferred to MTA in my sophomore year in high school and began living in its dormitory, one of the first things my roommates and I did was sign up for a subscription to the New York Times. The price was so low it...

Jun 7, 2024, 5:55 PM

Non-lyin’ Eyes

Senses of humor are funny things. I still crack up over almost any Mel Brooks movie, while my kids sigh and roll their eyes indulgently. I feel that way about the Marx Brothers, and still think one of the funniest scenes I’ve ever seen in...

May 17, 2024, 8:37 AM

Mississippi, find yourself another country to be part of

A trope I’ve recently seen repeated numerous times on Facebook is that American Jews are currently reliving the experience of German Jews in the 1930s. That idea is, in a word — or make that three words — simply not true. But instead of repeating...

May 10, 2024, 9:59 AM

Why I Don’t Write (Told in Almost 1400 Words)

For someone like me, with lots of opinions about lots of things, writing this column regularly is a blessing. I have a forum in which to detail and discuss my views to an audience broader than the one that can fit around my Shabbat table...

Apr 19, 2024, 1:47 AM

Singing Across Continents and Generations

My last column was a heavily political, serious one about the Israel-America relationship (“An Unnecessary Error”). I thought it might be somewhat controversial, and in fact the number of thoughtful comments I received was greater than usual. Surprisingly, there were more complimentary ones than I...

Apr 5, 2024, 11:35 AM

An Unnecessary Error

I have a number of rules that I follow in writing my columns. Here are three of them. Rule 1. Don’t write about American politics. Rule 2. Don’t write about Israeli politics. Rule 3. Sometimes ignore rules 1 and 2. This is a rule 3...

Mar 21, 2024, 10:11 PM

The State of Our Town

At some point in recent State of the Union addresses, presidents have usually said something positive about, well, the state of the union. President Reagan was the first (“the State of our Union is strong”) and President Biden the most recent (“the State of our...

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About Me

Joseph C. Kaplan, a regular columnist for the Jewish Standard, is the author of “A Passionate Writing Life: From ‘In my Opinion’ to ‘I’ve Been Thinking’” (available at Teaneck's Judaica House and its website). A retired lawyer and long-time resident of Teaneck with his wife Sharon, they’ve been blessed with four wonderful daughters and five delicious grandchildren.

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