יום רביעי, ט״ז תמוז תשפ״וWednesday, July 1, 2026
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Saul Jay Singer serves as Senior Legal Ethics Counsel with the District of Columbia Bar and is a collector of extraordinary original Judaica documents and letters. He welcomes comments at sauljsing@gmail.com. Before commencing his career as a litigator and legal ethicist, he served for fourteen years as an actuary for several ratemaking organizations and insurance companies and as actuary for the National Flood Insurance Program.
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After writing the first Batman story, “The Case of the Chemical Syndicate,” Finger went on to author 1,500 more stories over 25 years.
Behind each is a tale of time and place that, framed against various religious, political, social, cultural, and artistic milieus, can provide deep insight into Jewish historical leitmotifs.
I have to know people pretty well, else I may foolishly suspect that they are going to use me in their business.
During his address Gorbachev again spoke of the great loss the Soviet Union had sustained through the emigration of Russian Jews.
The World's Fair is in a way a reflection of mankind, its work and aspirations.
All of these songs have been selected because of special demands from the public, each composition being very popular among the Hebrews.
Prior to the birth of Israel, Montgomery twice played a critical, albeit often overlooked, role in saving the Jews of the Yishuv from genocide.
A great friend of the Jews, Darrow regularly denounced anti-Semitism and supported Jewish causes.
Though initially motivated by money, Schindler was appalled by the Nazi murder of many of his Jewish workers and he thereafter used all his skills to protect his Schindlerjuden (Schindler Jews).
He went through a list of other nations that, according to Toynbee himself, had committed atrocities, including the British in Ireland and the French in Syria.
Displayed here are the few stamps specifically presenting the Shabbat theme.
Many of our greatest artists have produced striking graphic works on these subjects; what follows is a selection of original artwork from my Sukkot collection.
Though Peres was raised in a non-religious family and was not personally observant, he studied Talmud as a child with his maternal grandfather, the great Torah scholar Rav Tzvi Hirsh Meltzer, Hy”d, who had a great influence on his life.
His act of conscience was broadly seen as a moment of pride, sacrifice, and religious commitment, though Koufax himself was far from observant.
Believing in the imminent arrival of the Messianic Age, he stressed the importance of aliyah to Eretz Yisrael and was a great supporter of the Jewish community there.
Also ironic is that one of his most recognized works is Beth Sholom Synagogue in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, considered by many critics to be his most beautiful and expressive house of worship.
Though Fischer reacted viscerally to even the suggestion that he was Jewish – he was, in fact, a vicious anti-Semite, Holocaust denier, and Israel-hater – his mother was Jewish and his biological father probably was as well.
Gorky openly, frequently, and vociferously criticized his government's malevolent oppression of the Jewish community.
In his later years he spoke out in favor of war crimes trials for the perpetrators of genocide in the former Yugoslavia, and he lent his name to the Holocaust study center and Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles.
Bonfils deliberately selected his subjects in order to preserve a vast range of information for geographical, ethnographic, biblical, archeological, architectural, and historical studies.
He mentions the threatening atmosphere of anti-Semitism in Mussolini's Italy and his concern for his wife and children.
Did you know the United States issued a 39-cent stamp featuring the Kotel back in 2007?
The discovery ultimately established the major defense mechanism in innate immunity, for which he won his Nobel Prize.
Newport had been financially devastated during the Revolution, when the British occupied the town and seized ships and other resources.
In Ani Maamin, Wiesel navigates the extremes between shallow religious fervor and glib atheism.
While it is not the purpose of this article to present a dissertation on the Torah’s views on evolution, suffice it to say this is a very controversial topic and that strong arguments exist on both sides.
The defeat of the Japanese there provided an important foundation for our ultimate victory over Japan, and the battle became a symbol of the great sacrifices made by our fighting forces during the war.
While honoring his deceased relatives through his work, Sendak simultaneously mocked those survivors with whom he grew up.
Salinger was raised as an Orthodox Jew, and his later turmoil regarding his Jewish identity is the key to understanding his life and work.
While a few Shutz-passes (letters of protection issued by Wallenberg to Hungarian Jews) signed by him do exist (though they are rarities), other autographed documents are virtually non-existent.
According to Schwartzbard, "When the policeman told me Petlura was dead I could not hide my joy. I leaped forward and threw my arms about his neck," and when the gendarme, Roger Mercier, asked Schwartzbard if he was the shooter, he replied, "I have killed a great assassin."
Friedman believed that while monopolies and oligarchies are injurious to everybody, these systems are particularly ruinous for Jews and for Israel.
There is a whole other transcendental level of delight, enchantment, and reverence that applies to collectors of Judaica documents.
During the nineteen years of Israeli statehood preceding the Six-Day War, popular songs were rarely written about yearning for Jerusalem until “Yerushalayim shel Zahav” broke the mold in 1967, when Shemer was asked to compose a song for the Israel Song Festival.
Enchanted by his immigrant mother-in-law’s rituals, stories, and incredible blintzes, Guthrie learned everything he could about the Jewish people...
Among the more than 2,500 costume-clad attendees were members of New York's most prominent Jewish families, including one gentleman dressed as a dreidel...
Ironically, shortly before being assigned to his historic mission, he had requested a transfer to a combat unit to avenge his relatives in Europe.
The designated escape route was for the children to cross into the Netherlands, from where they were to embark via ferry to England.
While advocating Jewish liberty, however, Jefferson simultaneously held Judaism itself in low regard.
Seuss’s wartime cartoons denounced American discrimination against Jews and called attention to the early stages of the Holocaust.
While he wrote only one piece of music directly for liturgical use, Hashkeveinu, which premiered at the Park Avenue Synagogue on May 11, 1945, Bernstein often named his works after Jewish themes and personalities.
Mrs. R. hurls the violin at the couch, screeching, “It’s horrible! I sound so horrible!” and again runs out of the room, sobbing.
William Howard Taft (1857-1930) was the only American president to also sit on the Supreme Court. The Republican was an effective administrator but a poor politician; caught in the intense battles between progressives and conservatives, he received little credit for his administration's achievements, which included establishing a postal savings system, admitting Arizona and New Mexico […]
When Dreyfus was finally cleared and Zola returned to France, Monet sank into a deep depression over the sordid and disgraceful affair.
She needs to rescue her fleshless memories, lest they flicker out and die.
Kissinger was viewed by many as a self-hating Jew who turned on his father and his people by consistently acting in a manner inimical to Jewish interests.
What follows are several excerpts, translated into English, to give readers a flavor of the late president’s beautiful prose:
The remarkable Unger, a true mathematical Renaissance man, was a visionary in the field of mathematics education who also wrote numerous texts, many of which became pedagogical standards used by university systems across Europe, particularly in Russia
At a time when many Jews changed their names and joined churches to deflect anti-Semitism and to facilitate assimilation into American society, Isidor did not deny his heritage; indeed, he embraced it.
In Twin Books Corp v. Walt Disney (1966), a patent infringement case involving the rights to Bambi, the California court wasted no time in properly crediting authorship of the beloved children's classic: It is a very common misconception that Bambi was the brainchild of the world's foremost entertainer of children, Walt Disney. To the […]
Compelled to show his friendship for the Jews in a more concrete form, Califano decided to print, at his own expense, a million color postcards reproducing The Ignominy of the Twentieth Century and to sell them nationally for the benefit of Jewish refugees from the Nazis.
Levine offered the Columbia to Lindbergh for $15,000, but insisted that, as a non-negotiable condition of the sale, he retain the right to designate the crew for what would surely be a historic flight.
Another intriguing “Wyatt Earp Jewish connection” involves the long-standing mystery of the legendary fallout between Wyatt and Doc Holliday.
As he shut his piercing grey eyes and began chanting a portion of the service from memory, we could all sense he was actually transported back there through time and space – and the best part was that he was taking us with him.
As the First Zionist Congress was indisputably one of the seminal events in modern Jewish history, it is not surprising that it became the subject of some of the most beloved, beautiful, and rare Rosh Hashanah cards ever created.
On November 22, 1963, Abraham Zapruder created one of the most famous, and valuable, pieces of film and became forever linked with one of the greatest American national tragedies when he stood with his camera on an elevated concrete abutment as President John F. Kennedy’s motorcade passed through Dealey Plaza in Dallas. Exhibited here is […]
The concept for Curious George began with a story about Raffy, a lonesome giraffe who befriends nine monkeys, the youngest of whom is named Fifi.
Jews who were considered, but not ultimately selected, include Woody Allen, Saul Bellow, David Ben-Gurion, Marc Chagall, Anne Frank, and Barbra Streisand.
There are a variety of sources that, comics historians claim, served as sources of inspiration for the Superman character.
Not as well known is that long before Anderson was denied permission to sing at Constitution Hall, she was refused lodging at Nassau Inn in Princeton during her April 16, 1937 concert at the McCarter Theatre there, and Albert Einstein invited her into his home as a guest.
Marceau suggested a dark reason for his wordless art: "The people who came back from the [concentration] camps were never able to talk about it…. My name is Mangel. I am Jewish. Perhaps that, unconsciously, contributed towards my choice of silence."
Any number of false narratives regarding the reason the Beatles did not perform at Ramat Gan continue to circulate, ranging from a dispute between Ori and another music promoter, Giora Godik, to the recalcitrance of Golda Meir.
Many properly cite Innocents as evidence that the Arab presence in Eretz Yisrael was so inconsequential before the arrival of the Zionist pioneers as to defeat any modern Arab claim to the land.
For the Jewish community, the influx of so many world-class musicians provided a tremendous cultural stimulus and generated great pride.
The establishment of Hebrew University was a cause much beloved to Einstein who in 1923, during what would be his only trip to Eretz Yisrael, delivered the university’s inaugural lecture on Har Hatzofim (Mt. Scopus) and, discussing the theory of relativity, spoke the first few sentences of his address in Hebrew.
The nations of the world left the vessel to sit rotting in the water during one of the coldest winters in decades and with its starving and freezing passengers abandoned.
An avid and unapologetic eugenicist, Shaw suggested that the Nazis “make it punishable incest for a Jew to marry anyone but an Aryan.”
Jewish Democrats did not entirely trust the son of Joseph Kennedy, a man broadly considered to be both anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi.
French thinkers of the Enlightenment were generally not pro-Semitic, to say the least.
Szold was among the founders and leaders (she served on its executive committee) of Ichud (“Unity”), a political group that campaigned against the creation of an independent, sovereign Jewish state in Eretz Yisrael.
The sense of the painting is that the old man has sacrificed himself to save the boy, as whatever meager provisions exist have been provided to the child.
It was only in the reign of George III (1760-1820) that Jews became socially acceptable in Britain, and Nathan became music master to Princess Charlotte and musical librarian to King George IV.
Agudat Yisrael led a forceful protest in the Knesset deploring the fact that these defenders of Israel had never been given a proper Jewish burial.
Though the CCAR supported the Jewish right to emigrate to Eretz Yisrael, it strenuously objected to defining Palestine as the Jewish homeland.
King was particularly concerned about the growing defamatory characterization of Zionism as racism, and he opposed the anti-Zionism in the “Black Power” movement.
An incredible child protégé and a world chess champion, Boris Spassky (1937- ), best known for his “Match of the Century” loss in Reykjavík to Fischer, will always be inexorably tied to the latter.
Not as well known, however, is Keller’s involvement with Jewish and Israeli communities.
This marked the first time I experienced the palpable sense of living, breathing history in my hands. “This is actually for sale?” I asked. “But how do I know it’s real?”
Undoubtedly the greatest manifestation of his antipathy was his infamous declaration: “[Expletive] the Jews. They don’t vote for us anyway.”
In 1943, Jewish Agency officials recruited her to join a clandestine military project whose ultimate purpose was to offer aid to beleaguered European Jewry.
Frank proclaimed himself Zvi’s successor and the reincarnation of King David.
On his marriage, he wrote: "This is what I believe: something of the core, of the essence of this meaningful and life-affirming Judaism will not be absent from our home" (1882).
The similarities between Goethe’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice and the Golem of Prague are stark and unmistakable...
Upon his return to London, Montefiore was given a hero’s welcome, including a big ceremony and special synagogue services and, when he met with Queen Victoria to present her with the firman, she honored him by permitting him to add the Lion of Judah holding a banner bearing the word “Jerusalem” to his coat of arms.
June 26, 2026 
