There is a tragic account of the last moments of Grigori Zinoviev, the Russian Bolshevik leader of Jewish descent who was executed by Stalin in 1936. According to the historian Donald Rayfield, on …
more
By Ben Cohen
|
4/18/18
|
Among Sephardic Jews of my grandmother’s generation, there was a popular, if unproven, belief that Gen. Francisco Franco, the military dictator who ruled Spain from 1939 until his death in …
more
By Ben Cohen
|
3/28/18
|
What makes us happy — or unhappy?
The 2018 edition of the World Happiness Report, published annually by a group of United Nations-linked development experts, asserts that a …
more
By Ben Cohen
|
3/21/18
|
Mention the name “Celine” to most people in the United States—or Europe, for that matter—and they will think you’re talking about the long-serving Canadian pop diva. But …
more
By Ben Cohen
|
3/14/18
|
Queen Elizabeth II is marking her 66th year of reign in 2018, which by any standard is an extraordinarily long time for a single individual to be a head of state. (By comparison, King David is …
more
By Ben Cohen
|
3/7/18
|
I interviewed Mateusz Morawiecki, the prime minister of Poland, during his September visit to New York. The public-relations maven who arranged the meeting pitched Morawiecki — then …
more
By Ben Cohen
|
2/28/18
|
Flush from his victory over far-right candidate Marine Le Pen in the French elections last July, President Emmanuel Macron decided to address head on the horrific murder of a Jewish pensioner in …
more
By Ben Cohen
|
2/22/18
|
Who owns the Holocaust? That, ultimately, is the key question posed by the impending legislation in Poland that will criminalize any discussion, or investigation, or mere mention, of incidents of …
more
By Ben Cohen
|
2/7/18
|
Recently, I’ve been nursing some concerns about the way the Israeli government is handling its response to the BDS campaign against the Jewish state, and with it the wider challenges of …
more
By Ben Cohen
|
1/31/18
|
In his important book, “Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition,” the scholar David Nirenberg makes the persuasive case that Islam has faced similar theological challenges to Christianity in …
more
By Ben Cohen
|
1/24/18
|