The Cloth of Truth

My father was a Yiddish literary star, writing short stories, essays, and novels. He lectured in Canada, the U.S., Argentina, Venezuela, the former Soviet Union, and more. He was a Scholar-in-Residence at Oxford University. Nobel laureate Eli Wiesel said he was “the novelist of the Warsaw Ghetto,” whose book “Ship of the Hunted” was “…cut […]

A shaman, a cop, a snake, & a bear walk into a short story…

Too busy to commit to an epic novel? Newly released short stories I just released three short stand-alone stories from the epic novel Quantum Cannibals. The stories are free on Kindle Unlimited, $0.99 from Amazon.com. If you haven’t yet jumped into the full novel, dip your toes in the waters through these selections.

Kill the Indian/Jew, Save the Child

There is a sad children’s story about a Czarist Russian soldier who threatened an elderly, terrified Jewish man. The brutal soldier rolled up his sleeve to administer a beating, revealing an ugly scar on his forearm. The old man looked at the scar and froze. “Yossele?” he said to the soldier. “Huh? Who’s Yossele?” Tears […]

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year (we hope) It’s the five thousand, seven hundred and eighty second birthday of that fourteen-billion-year-old ball of rock and water we call home (see Happy Quantum New Year for the math). The day is relevant to all humans, not just the Jews. After a year like 5781, everyone should take it seriously. […]

COVID: The Questions Stand

Though answers may change, many questions stand. Dr. Anthony Fauci made an important statement about the fluid responses to the Wuhan virus. “So when you hear someone say something at one point and then two or three months later, if you stick with what you said at the original time when you had one-fifth of […]

Trying To Be a Good Character

The novel Quantum Cannibals has a large cast of characters, some evil, some saintly. Most are complex, neither black nor white. A person can be a good character, but simply confused when facing an impossible situation. All of the characters in the book are intended to reflect back on our non-fictional world, to say something […]

Sexual Violence- Twice a Victim

I’ve been victimized by sexual violence. Lucky me; it’s happened twice, and I was horrified. Let me clarify. I wasn’t horrified when it happened. I thought it was funny back then, and laughed. Rather, I was horrified when told that what happened to me was sexual violence. An educational program I’m taking recently obliged all […]

“No” Meant “Try Harder”

A beautiful demon rapes a human, who enjoys it. The demon then accuses the human of raping her. When I composed this scene for my novel Quantum Cannibals (publication date Nov. 2018), I thought it fictional. In the contemporary non-fictional world (such as it is), the #MeToo movement has brought the demons out from their […]

I’m Grateful It’s Cold

I’m grateful it’s so cold outside. Not just bitterly cold, but skin-numbing cold. Frostbite cold. Not to mention windy, making the weather even more unpleasant, maybe dangerous. (Much warmer though, than what the exiles face in the novel Quantum Cannibals) I’m Grateful for Wood Maybe I should go chop some firewood. On a cold day […]

Theater of Fear

They did not foresee… the development of a vast mass communications industry, concerned in the main neither with the true nor the false, but with the unreal, the more or less totally irrelevant Aldous Huxley We all like good Theater. Something terrible happens to an innocent victim (or victims), the good guys scurry around trying […]

Control of Cultural Achievements

There is no denying the great cultural achievements of western civilization, its technological brilliance. Virtually all modern innovation, and most of contemporary science comes from Europe and North America- a handful of countries representing a small fraction of the world’s population. Not coincidentally, these are the regions of the world where democracy and economic freedom […]

We Suffer for Our Sins; 9-11 as punishment

The Prophets of the Bible (Jeremiah, Isaiah et al) rebuked Israel, saying we suffer for our sins. It was Israel’s misbehavior (rather than Nebuchadnezzer’s), that caused the destruction of the holy Temple in Jerusalem, the icon of God’s presence in the world. Our sins were so egregious that even King Josiah’s repentance (about […]

Of Course You Realize This Means War!

Sympathy for the Devil Victims After the Islamic terror attack in Nice, politicians around the world expressed their sympathy with the people of France, sending warm thoughts and prayers. Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister of Canada said “Our sympathy is with the victims.” Leung Chun-ying of Hong Kong expressed his “deepest sympathies” with the French […]

We, the Accused

Holding the Victim to Blame Whenever there is a terror attack against Israel, the world media finds some way to make Israel the accused, whether for provocation or retaliation, for people dying or failing to die, for killing the terrorists, or failing to kill them. This is not a new phenomenon. Two thousand years ago, […]

You Have to Ask the Right Question

Q: Was it morally wrong for the United States and Canada to imprison their citizens of Japanese ancestry during World War II, and confiscate their property? A: It was a horrible illegal act, discriminating against people solely because they looked different. Italians and Germans, whose ancestral homelands were also the enemy, were not locked up. […]