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Sam Lehman-Wilzig

May 16, 2025, 9:40 AM

Democracy’s Immune System Is Working (in Israel & the World)

Democracy is under attack in Israel, the US, and several other countries around the world. Indeed, in 2018 no less than two Harvard political science professors published a best-selling book: “How Democracies Die,” warning of democracy’s slow slide to...

Apr 4, 2025, 5:58 PM

Annalena Baerbock Is Wrong About Israel

Annalena Baerbock, Photo: Martin Kraft, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

On April 2, 2025, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Hungary. This European state welcomes him, even though the International Criminal Court, in one of its most shamefully politicized moves in modern history, has issued an arrest warrant against...

Jared M. Feldschreiber

Feb 23, 2025, 1:11 AM

Press Freedom Crackdowns Demand an Antidote

Downtown Budapest, HU (Photo by Balázs Béli).

Donald Trump’s retribution campaign to weaken a robust independent free press is in full flight. These weeks have proven Trump's abilities to run roughshod on civil society programs, as the halting and gradual shutdown of USAID as well as...

Feb 13, 2025, 5:11 AM

Siege of Budapest 1944-45: The Struggle to Survive

Mural of Tibor Baranski, Sr., honored as a Righteous Among the Nations at Yad Vashem.

Judaism was much on my mind during a vacation last year that started in Budapest. I knew the tragic last phase of the Holocaust there, but I had much to learn about the layers of history packed into the...

Joshua Z. Rokach

Jan 28, 2025, 8:37 AM

The cloud over US Holocaust Remembrance Day

This year’s Holocaust Remembrance Day marked the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. World leaders gathered in Poland, along with the few remaining survivors, for a moving service. In the US, the Holocaust Museum publicly read the names...

Jan 2, 2025, 10:32 PM

Do you Believe in Angels?

Small Miracles All Around Us Though we tend to think of angels as winged, white beings soaring in the sky, Judaism promotes the conviction that angels are all around us! The word angel in Hebrew is “malach,” (which also means "messenger")...

Nov 8, 2024, 9:03 AM

Eighty years without Hannah

Anna Szenesh. Photo with permission (c) National Library of Israel, 2024

This poet and 30 other young Jews in Palestine undertook an audacious – and doomed – mission to rescue their brethren from the Holocaust

Oct 27, 2024, 1:25 PM

The bindings of Isaac: Goldziher’s library in Jerusalem

Ignaz Goldziher’s Budapest study, Goldziher family photo album, F72.94, Hungarian Jewish Museum and Archives.

This past Sukkot holiday marked an important anniversary for the National Library of Israel and the study of Islam in Israel. A century ago, the Hebrew University opened a prized acquisition to the Jerusalem public: the 6,000-volume private library...

Sep 25, 2024, 1:54 PM

Discovered Yiddish ‘Book’ of Carpathian Jewish Family in Need of Translation

The Carpathian Mountain Jews (my term) were a Jewish branch unto themselves, having occupied the eastern part of historic Hungary (including parts of what are today Slovakia, Ukraine, and Romania) from before Ashkenazi Jews from Germany came to eastern...

Sep 19, 2024, 1:44 PM

Insights into the Political Aspirations of Netanyahu and Orbán

In this article, I explore the parallels between two highly polarizing political figures: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Although their political landscapes differ, both leaders have advanced nationalist agendas that resonate strongly with...

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