by Matthew Friedman | Dec 10, 2023 | Commentary, Gaza Journal
Chanukah is coming. If you know me at all, you will know that I have conflicted feelings about the holiday. I welcome any holiday that brings us together as a community, and as a people, to share our heritage. I love the lights and the latkes, and it was always a...
by Matthew Friedman | Dec 3, 2023 | Commentary, Gaza Journal
What else can we call the warnings from the Israeli government – and from Benjamin Netanyahu himself – for Gazan civilians to seek safety, and the claims it is working to create “safe areas” for civilians to evacuate to, but “Compassion...
by Matthew Friedman | Nov 26, 2023 | Commentary, Gaza Journal
The truce began today. I choose to call it this, since there is something ghoulish about the word “pause.” That sounds like a brief, unexpected, and unwelcomed interruption, like when the referee in a boxing match “pauses” the fight just long enough to be sure that...
by Matthew Friedman | Nov 19, 2023 | Commentary, Gaza Journal
I was riding the train to work last week, when a man sat down in the seat next to me, pulled a Talmudic text (Hebrew text within Hebrew text) from his messenger bag and started reading. I was listening to music on my headphones, and had removed my hat, so he could see...
by Matthew Friedman | Nov 12, 2023 | Commentary, Gaza Journal
A student asked about the poppy in my lapel today after class. I explained what it was for, and that I wore it as an act of remembrance for my father, who served in the Second World War, and for all of the people who have died and continue to die in our wars. She said...
by Matthew Friedman | Nov 5, 2023 | Commentary, Gaza Journal
“We have an obligation to bear witness to suffering. Yet, if that witness is to have any meaning apart from passively registering the fact of the suffering, it must repudiate the violence that caused the suffering and speak against the power that deployed the...
