Arlene Goldbard

I was just listening to Republican Convention coverage on NPR and heard a young delegate from Nebraska describe herself as part of the “post-9/11 generation,” and therefore especially concerned about national security. She put me in mind of \Letter to the Next Generation\, a wonderful film by Jim Klein (you can find it […]

Living in the San Francisco Bay Area, very near the liberal epicenter at Berkeley, I’ve yet to meet anyone who is now or has ever been a Bush voter. I?ve been thinking hard about this, because it’s in my nature to want to understand those with whom I disagree, and my encounters with their […]

In the Jewish spiritual tradition, there is a Torah reading–a portion of the Hebrew Bible–assigned to each week. This week’s text is \Shoftim\, from Deuteronomy 16:18-21.9, focusing on prohibitions and exhortations to justice. I?m by no means a biblical literalist, but I often find the weekly text resonates with the concerns of the […]

Two headlines this gray morning by the San Francisco Bay. The California Supreme Court invalidates the marriage licenses issued to gay couples in San Francisco, and the governor of New Jersey, flanked at the podium by his wife and his mother, steps down, confessing that he has been living a lie: he comes […]

We had houseguests this past week, dear friends we?ve known for decades. Lingering over breakfast on Friday, we divvied up the \New York Times\. Whoever commented first on the employment report (200,000 new jobs had been forecast for July, but only 32,000 actually materialized) spoke what all of us were feeling: I […]