Social Commentary

It’s no news at all that China has been stealing intellectual property from all the major intellectual property producers in the world. This was well known to U.S. Presidents Carter, Reagan, George H. W. Bush (who had served as U. S. Ambassador to China), Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama....

Would you consider being a character witness for my Senate confirmation hearing? At last, a really good — and totally appropriate — job in the White House is available, and the President has decided to nominate me. This week, speaking in San Diego, he proposed a new Space Force, and I’m ready to serve...

My mother was born one hundred and eight years ago, in 1909, in the village of Yliakiai, in Northwest Lithuania. She used its Yiddish name “Yelok.” She was one of four children who were orphaned very, very young. With some community help, the oldest child, Esther, then just a teenager,...

After a stay in a hospital near my home in Berkeley, California, I received a questionnaire from the Administrator. I responded that I had been delighted with the courtesies and professionalism of the nurses, technicians and physicians, but I resented the antisemitism. On my second morning there, my breakfast tray...

Once a week, usually in the morning, the fruit and vegetable man drove his Jewish truck down our street in Cape Town, stopping outside our home and blowing the horn. Until I walked out to look at his truck, I didn’t know motor vehicles could be Jewish. But there it...

When my parents were very young, only a few years older than my grandson is now, they fled their Baltic homes from the growing ugliness of European anti-Semitism. Much of the Western world was closed to them, so they found refuge in South Africa. In 1936, in their mid-twenties, they...

I wore my best blue suit to meet Harry Springett. In a place where even modest dwellings were named, my parents took me to “Fairhaven,” 15 Flower Street, The Gardens, Cape Town. Mr. Springett was the first photographer I’d met. A little shy of my first birthday, Dad and Mom...

My wife nudged me awake and said “I have a pain in my belly.” “Not surprising,” I said, “given all the boerewors (farmer’s sausage) we ate at the neighbor’s braaivleis (barbecue) last night. Would you like Alka-Seltzer?” She said “I don’t think that’s the reason. I think the baby is...

Davey Neipris of Boston, Mass., gave me a left-profile portrait of George Washington. It’s crafted in metal, fractionally short of an inch in diameter, and cost him no more than 25 cents. That was in the days when you could get a cup of coffee, including a refill, for 5...

On a unique occasion, before I entered elementary school, my mother spoke of her birthplace. She called it “Yelok,” the Yiddish form of Ylakiai. It was then a tiny village, a shtetl, in northwest Lithuania, with a population of less than one thousand. About half of them were Jewish. My...

We talked with each other for twelve years. To be honest, I did most of the talking, he did most of the listening. I knew he was actively engaged because he would cock his head slightly, just so, and look at me unblinkingly with his warm, beautiful brown eyes. We...

On the Saturday before Rosh Hashanah in 1946, before my eighth birthday, I accompanied my parents to visit my only remaining grandparent, Blume-Devorah Westermann-Shevelev. The others had all died in Latvia and Lithuania before I was born. We lived in a flat on the lower slope of Table Mountain, with...

In January 1947 my father’s pride and joy arrived. His only child was then eight years old. The brand new 1946 Chevrolet Fleetmaster, grey with a blue top, had been transported to Cape Town by rail from South West Africa (formerly German West Africa, now Namibia) where my mother’s only...

In 1964, the United States Embassy in Pretoria, South Africa, had two Fourth of July parties. One was for people of all ethnicities. The other was a reception for government officials, “sanitized” for whites only. Invited to attend, I declined, repelled by this American tolerance of apartheid. A few days...

Many, many years ago, in deep midsummer, I journeyed to consult with the wisest of all people, the Oracle of Delphi. The arduous horseback ride north of Athens was quite uncomfortable, especially the last twenty kilometers into the mountains. Arriving at the top of the hill, where the temple is...

In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, my father would occasionally bring home from the synagogue on Friday nights a person or couple who had survived the Holocaust. In the warm South African summer of 1945-6, I saw a number on a dinner guest’s arm. When I asked...