by Matthew Friedman | Oct 2, 2019 | Commentary, Politics
If you spend enough time in the Jewish social media universe, you start to see the same questions repeated over and over: Are the children of intermarriage with Gentiles really Jewish? Did the Khazars really exist? Why is chicken “meat?” The conversations on Facebook,...
by Matthew Friedman | Sep 24, 2019 | Commentary, First Person
I have been remembering high school this week, in the wake of the revelations of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s history of racist actions. And not fondly. As Matthew Barlow noted in The Typescript last week, “racism runs deep” in Canada, a reality that...
by Matthew Friedman | Sep 11, 2019 | Commentary, Politics
And they’re off! The Canadian election began this morning at about 10:00, when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau asked Governor General Julie Payette – Queen Elizabeth II’s representative in Canada – to dissolve Parliament and call for a new vote. All I can think of is...
by Matthew Friedman | Aug 14, 2019 | Commentary, Politics
O ye wha are sae guid yoursel’, Sae pious and sae holy, Ye’ve nought to do but mark and tell Your neibours’ fauts and folly! – Robert Burns *** There are few things so rank as self-righteous ignorance, and Scott Gilmore’s op-ed article in...
by Matthew Friedman | Aug 7, 2019 | Commentary
Toni Morrison has died. This is inexpressibly sad news, though perhaps not entirely unexpected. The Nobel laureate, and author of Beloved, Song of Solomon, God Bless the Child, and so many other trenchant, deeply-felt commentaries on the human condition was 88 years...
by Matthew Friedman | Aug 4, 2019 | Commentary, Editorial
I saw the headline on my phone’s home screen as we made our way to the Loop (Chicago’s downtown) for an early al-fresco dinner on the Riverwalk, and a concert at Harris Theater in Millennium Park. I read “Multiple Victims in El Paso Shooting,” and did not read...
