Avraham Azrieli | Updates

A Merry Jewish Christmas? Avraham Azrieli, Posted on May 21, 2016

Avraham Azrieli — Tue, 23 Dec 2025 13:33:29 -0500

A Merry Jewish Christmas?

By Avraham Azrieli*

Christmas as a Jewish holiday? This proposition usually earns derision or a stern lecture accompanied by clenched fists. Christmas is the birthday of Jesus Christ, the Christian messiah whose crucifixion unleashed a perpetual blood libel against the Jewish people.

For many centuries, “Jesus killers!” was a rallying cry for attacking Jewish communities, for robbing, raping, knifing, spearing, axing,

burning, drawing, quartering, hanging, drowning, shooting, and torturing innocent Jews, or at least expelling them en mass from their homes in Germany, England, France, Portugal, Spain, and Italy. As the Reverend James Carroll concludes in Constantine’s Sword: The Church and Jews (Houghton Mifflin, 2001), the Nazi mindset “had its foundation in Christianity,” and the Holocaust was the natural culmination of the “Church’s modus operandi down the centuries.”

So how could Jews partake in Christ’s birthday celebration?

The answer, perhaps, starts with another question: Do millions of Christians, who sing the Christmas hymn “Hark! the Herald Angels Sing,” know that its composer, Felix Mendelssohn, was the grandson of the great Jewish rabbi and philosopher Moses Mendelssohn?

And how about “City sidewalks, busy sidewalks, dressed in holiday style, in the air there’s a feeling of Christmas,” written by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans, Jewish kids from Pittsburgh and Buffalo?

Or this: “He sings a love song, as we go along, walking in a winter wonderland,” by Felix Bernard, born in Brooklyn as Felix Bernhardt to Russian-German Jewish immigrants. And “Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow,” by Sammy Cahn-Cohen and Jule Styne, who also wrote ‘The Christmas Waltz.’

Then there’s the heartfelt promise that “I’ll be Home for Christmas…you can count on me…,” the lyrics that touched millions

of listeners during hard times, written by Walter Kent, born to a Yiddish-speaking Kauffman family in New York. He wrote with Samuel Buck Ram, a Jewish partnership that also gave us “Only you…can make this world…seem right…”

To really get going at Christmastime, we sing: “Giddy up, giddy up, giddy up, let’s go, let’s look at the snow…” This urging came from

Mitchell Parrish, a good Christian name if there ever was one, only that he was born Michael Hyman Pashelinsky in Lithuania and ended up also writing lyrics for the all-American Jazz immortal ‘Stardust’ with Hoagy Carmichael.

And who wouldn’t agree that “There’s no place like home for the holidays…” by Al Stillman, another Jew, just like Joan Ellen Javits, who

co-wrote ‘Santa Baby.’ Arguably the biggest contribution to Christmas came from the man who wrote these hits (sing with me!):

“Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer…”

“I heard the bells on Christmas Day…”

“Rockin’ around the Christmas tree…”

“A holly jolly Christmas…”

“Run, Rudolph, run…”

These five songs, so instrumental to the Christmas spirit, were written by the Jewish virtuoso Johnny Marks, a Bronze Star recipient for his

battlefield courage during World War II.

But no one did more for American songwriting and for Christmas than the Jewish songwriter who gave us “God bless America…” and “ I’ve got my love to keep me warm…,” when he wrote “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas, just like the ones I used to know…”

I’ve always wondered about this genius, this tireless (despite confessing “Oh, how I hate to get up in the morning…”) fountain of immortal

songs, this Irving Berlin, born Israel Baline, son of an unemployed immigrant cantor from Belarus. What Christmases had he “used to know” while growing up dirt poor on the Jewish lower east side of Manhattan? How could he describe so aptly the longing for a white Christmas, the sadness of every GI who had to spend Christmas in the balmy trenches of the South Pacific, the swampy rivers of Vietnam, or the scorching sands of the Arabian Gulf? How did he know what they felt at Christmas so far away from home?

I can’t answer for him, but my guess is that he knew because we all experience Christmas no matter what our faith is, or what language our parents spoke. He knew because old Christmas had begotten an alter ego that surpassed Christ and exceeded religion and evolved into a universal holiday that’s rich with Christian traditions and Jewish creativity.

Without detracting from Christmas services held by the faithful in various denominations, all of us outside the Church walls experience an inclusive, embracing Christmas that infuses civilization every December. We experience it while going to work, walking down the street, shopping at the mall, or watching TV with the kids.

And we experience it through music, because songs are the common language of all people, Jews and Christians alike, as we wish each other, in the words of Irving Berlin: “May your days be merry and bright…and may all your Christmases be white.”

* Avraham Azrieli is the author of “Christmas for Joshua,” a novel about a family confronting a painful crisis at Christmas. Azrieli writes novels and screenplays. www.AzrieliBooks.com

This essay may be copied, forwarded, or shared in whole without specific permission.

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ISRAEL, REVISITED by Avraham Azrieli

Avraham Azrieli — Tue, 23 Dec 2025 13:06:29 -0500

ISRAEL, REVISITED by Avraham Azrieli
Posted on Nov 2, 2016 in Articles | Comments Off
ISRAEL, REVISITED

by Avraham Azrieli

(Originally published in the Jewish News of Greater Phoenix, July 2013)

A recent visit to Israel rekindled my affection for our Jewish State, while fueling my dread of its demise.

Despite ominous warnings from our kids’ nanny and the State Department, we left for Israel with our three youngsters to attend my niece’s Orthodox wedding, which was unlike any nuptial celebration we have seen before. The groom’s friends, in white shirts, slacks and sandals, handguns stuffed in their belts, danced tirelessly to modern interpretations of old Hassidic tunes. Faces red, long dresses sodden with sweat, the bride’s girlfriends danced behind a see-through partition until their ankles showed. The groom himself had hired a tutor to help him rehearse the complicated steps of an old Sicilian piece, which he preformed without tripping before his betrothed. The parents’ friends, hair graying under knitted yarmulkes and colorful headdresses, sat around loaded tables with their abundant offspring and pointed out possible matches for their own brides-to-be, until the groom’s father pulled them into the ever-expanding rings of dancers.

I had left Israel fourteen years ago to study in New York, planning to return and practice law. Like other Israelis, I stayed, intoxicated by the incredible lightness of good life in America—all you need is lots of hard work. The perspective of passing years and periodic pilgrimages has fostered a measure of objectivity. The phrase, “There is no place like home,” attains a fresh meaning when you pay infrequent visits to your terrorized homeland.

We landed at Ben Gurion airport an hour before sundown on the eve of Shavuot. A young taxi driver put out his cigarette and quickly packed us into a tidy white van. My knees soon began to hurt as they repeatedly collided every time our driver threaded the van between other cars on the highway to Jerusalem. Road #1 was filled to capacity, cars breaking the speed limit in both directions, drivers tailgating, fencing each other with high beams and bemoaning horns, steering single handedly, while the other hand is used for talking. Our driver dialed his wife on the cell phone, while passing a small Fiat on the left shoulder, and reminded her to bring his white shirt to his parents’ house for the holiday dinner. He assured her he would be there soon; I believed him, and buckled up.

As our jetlag subsided, we left on an excursion to my childhood hometown, Haifa. Descending the mountains west of Jerusalem, I noticed large signs for Road #6 – the first-ever Israeli toll road. I called one of my brother-in-law’s three cell phones, and he said, “The Cross Israel Highway is not safe.” Later that night I learned that, while we took the coastal road from Tel Aviv, a grandfather and his six-year-old granddaughter were fatally shot by Arabs on the new toll road.

I met a friend for a late-night dessert at a Jerusalem cafe. A security guard frisked us and probed our shoes with a metal detector. The place was busy, giving us a warm feeling of camaraderie with the other targets. We sat outside, a low wall separating us from the sidewalk. I eyeballed every pedestrian male whose love handles could hide a more imminent health risk to him and others. The tab included a security charge, which I gladly paid.

After a few days, my wife set aside her vow to avoid public places and went shopping for Israeli sandals with my sister. They returned with three pairs—red, black, and brown, which my wife modeled for us in my mother’s living room/dining room/guestroom combo. We marveled at the fortunate events that coincided to produce such a steal on designer sandals. A TV newsflash interrupted us. A suicide bomber dressed as an ultra-Orthodox Jew had triggered his belt on a bus at a Jaffa Street stop, along the path my wife and sister had walked an hour earlier. Sixteen killed. One hundred wounded.

Israelis’ fierce zest for life reminded me of New York City. While not as many people speak Hebrew in New York City as in Israel, they exhibit similar driving habits and comparable scars from Islamic terrorism. Both are populated by disproportionate numbers of writers, painters, musicians, idealists, and regular dreamers, all sharing sidewalks with corporate leaders, government big wigs, and lots of lawyers, all infused with frantic energy, driven to change the world no later than yesterday. In Israel, as in New York City, people care.

Comparing Israel of today with my recollection of two, six, eight and ten years ago, I am saddened by its decline. Three years of post-Oslo Palestinian terrorism have sapped the famous sabra optimism. While the American economy is hurting, Israel is in the midst of a great depression. Unemployment has surpassed all historic records. Government coffers, as Treasury Minister Bibi Netanyahu hoarsely recites, are empty, resulting in elimination of essential health, education, and social services. Dwindling tax revenues are consumed by an indispensable defense and security Octopus. Foreign tourism is all but gone. Foreign investment is on the ice, while emigration is on the rise, causing the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv to require a personal interview in English with every visa applicant. Secular Zionism has followed the socialist pioneers into nursing homes, and the all-powerful labor union, the Histadrut, unleashes destructive general strikes to resuscitate an octogenarian-led Labor party, while the ruling Likud searches for its lost way. An old Israeli industrialist, whose companies had (until recently) manufactured elite fashion for worldwide consumption for half a century, told me: “Arafat has won.”

Talking politics was once a favorite Israeli pastime. But these days, Israelis don’t want to talk politics. When you ask, “What will happen?” most Israelis say, “Worse.” No one bothers to speculate about the future. Fatalism is safer, which explains why people still crowd buses and go browsing in the malls. Many Israelis have stopped watching the news, shutting their eyes to more scenes of the same horrors. President Bush’s Road Map ignites mere indifference. Since Arafat had declined Barak’s Camp David offer of a Palestinian state in all of the Territories, Israelis have grown disillusioned about the Arabs’ ultimate goal, giving more credence to the road maps that hang in every Arab school in the Middle East, which do not even show Israel. My mother, born in Palestine in 1934, said: “The Muslims are just like the Nazis. Hitler also started by killing the Jews, and when no one stopped him, he proceeded to destroy the world. The Goyim are so naïve.”

But a quiet transformation is changing Israeli society. Suffering has caused many to embrace faith. Religiousness in Israel is fashioned by covering one’s head. By this measure, Israel is more religious. Men opt to become modern Orthodox, fashioning knitted caps (larger circumference indicating stricter observance). Others skip directly to ultra-Orthodox ranks, adorned with black yarmulkes and blacker hats. Women have their choice of flowered headdresses, shapely ladies’ hats, or deceptively realistic wigs. Orthodox organizations, which feed on government subsidies, offer free daycare, schools, and healthcare, as well as financial and spiritual support in difficult times. Considering the peace of mind that comes with knowing that fate is prescribed from above, it’s no wonder many have turned to reliance on the Almighty.

Orthodox families typically have many children, who themselves marry young and multiply. Their eyes are bright with hope that has vanished from secular outlooks. Teenage girls volunteer for two years of national service, as teachers in poor communities, caregivers for the elderly, nurses in hospitals, or organizers in youth clubs. Religious boys take pride in military service, and have become a majority in elite units. A religious general was recently appointed to a front-line command, breaking a glass ceiling that had existed since Israel was born. In the navy, air force, and army, Orthodox recruits distinguish themselves with unquestioning patriotism, high energy, and courage in battle. And when their military or national service is complete, religious couples dedicate themselves to social causes and pioneer new communities. While the anti-religious party, Shinui, grew dramatically in the last elections and obtained powerful government ministries in a coalition deal with Sharon, many dismiss it as the last flicker of life for a secular Israel, a temporary bump in the unstoppable rise of religious power in Israeli politics. “Who else,” the Orthodox ask, “is still a Zionist?”

Whatever your denominational convictions are, you cannot help but respect the enthusiastic Zionist fever that typifies the Orthodox sector in Israel and, some say, fuels its growth. And, while its spiritual leaders occasionally issue Iranian-style rulings, its political leaders preach tolerance. A new – and first – Orthodox mayor of Jerusalem declared on his first day in office that City Hall would maintain its support of the Gay Pride Parade in Jerusalem and would not interfere with restaurants and clubs that open on Friday nights. “We must live together in tolerance,” he declared. A person lives as he believes.”

The mayor’s conciliatory tone, however, is an island in a stormy sea of factional strife. The combative tradition of the Israeli Knesset, which includes a bomb thrown by a young man who, years later, became its Speaker, has recently been one-upped by wide spread voting fraud. Attorney for one beleaguered Knesset Member, who had pressed the voting buttons for absentee members during crucial votes, claimed that his client did so because “Everybody else was doing it.” The same week, two brothers found themselves on opposite sides when the IDF fought with civilian settlers in an attempt to vacate an illegal post in the West Bank.

Many Israelis believe settlements should be removed to make way for a Palestinian State in the Territories. But a growing number of religious Israelis believe that God had given Judea and Samaria to His Chosen People, and “What God gave, only God can take away.” They complain bitterly that the term “West Bank” falsely connotes a narrow strip along the Jordan River, while in reality Judea and Samaria extend 40 miles west into Israel to the 1967 Green Line, which is less than 10-miles from Mediterranean coastline. A quick look at the map confirms their frustration, as the West Bank indeed occupies most of central Israel, leaving it with a sandy corridor connecting the Galilee in the north with the Negev Desert in the south.

We drove to a post-wedding “Seven Blessings” dinner at the settlement of Yakir, expecting a narrow road connecting little settlements. Instead, we found ourselves on a wide highway heading east from Kfar Saba. Well paved and brightly lit, the highway passed by large clusters of homes, industrial parks and retail outlets. The “settlement” of Ariel, for example, has become a city with its own university. Other settlements in the West Bank, such as Efrat and Maaleh Adomin, are close behind Ariel, with tens of thousands of families living vibrantly on the land of their ancestors. In practical terms, uprooting the city of Ariel and relocating it to a place within the Green Line to make way for a Palestinian State, is akin to pulling out Tucson and relocating it to Maricopa County to make way for an American Indian reservation.

Many of the settlers have put in deep-roots. The young couples, who pitched tents atop barren hills a generation ago, have built large homes, grew gardens, and raised kids who have already started their own families next door. The sheer quantity of middle-class families in those communities makes any talk of wholesale removal a pipe dream. No wonder the Arab Street has supported Arafat in foregoing the Camp David deal for a more final solution to the Zionist Entity.

We spent hours at Yakir with extended family and friends, celebrating the Seven Blessings for the newlyweds. We left after midnight and drove back toward the Green Line in a small Renault that my brother-in-law had borrowed from a friend. The car was armored with inch-thick windows and steel plates. Its little engine was ill equipped to propel more than a thin-skinned car. I had to shift gears rapidly to keep momentum on the incline. My American kids, unfamiliar with manual transmission, were intrigued with their daddy mixing something with a stick that protruded from the floor of the rattling car. We took a shortcut through several small towns within the Green Line near Petah Tikvah. Every few minutes, elderly volunteers with single-load, WWII Czech rifles and Civil Guard armbands stopped us in makeshift roadblocks to verify that we were not Palestinian terrorists. They shown powerful flashlights into the car, making my kids giggle.

Last morning in Israel. I got up with the sun and drove east from Jerusalem, descending into the scorching Judea desert. I stopped at seven security checkpoints. Reservists in their 30’s and 40’s, in full metal jacket, machine guns in the ready, searched my trunk for explosive belts and suggested it was time to get the car washed. The tourist stops along the western shore of the Dead Sea were deserted. At Masada, a state-of-the-art visitor center offered refreshments (I tried a glass of date juice at $5), artful knick knacks, and a video clip starring Peter O’Tool as the Roman general in Hollywood’s version of the ancient events.

A new cable car whisked me and a small group of Japanese tourists to the mountaintop. The Japanese’s joyous mood was at odds with the solemn silence of the ruins. The brochure provided by the Israel Antiquities Authorities told the story of King Herod’s paranoid excesses, building a self-contained fort that could support ten thousand men for two years on top of a mountain in the middle of uninhabitable desert. Huge stocks of food and water, cultivable dirt brought from fertile parts of the kingdom, weapon tool-shops, pigeon farm, and a cliff-hanging, 3-level palace offering northern views of the desert and the single road that a hostile army may take from Jerusalem.

Herod never needed to hole up in his palatial shelter. But a century later, during the last year of the Jewish rebellion against the Romans, Masada became the last stronghold of Jewish rebels and their families. Thus, Herod’s palatial bedrooms turned into communal sleeping quarters for aesthetic Jewish patriots. I looked at the earthen ramp the Romans spent a year building, and the gap in the outside wall, where the Romans finally broke in, finding that a mass suicide had deprived them of enslaving the heroes of Masada. I stood in the “lottery room” where the rebels’ leader Elazar ben Yair drew small pieces of clay with names to select the ten men who would slaughter all of the others, and then each other. I couldn’t help but think whether, 2000 years later, Jewish sovereignty over this parched land is again writing its requiem.

Driving back to Jerusalem, I saw CNN’s Wolf Blitzer standing in a field by a reflective umbrella, talking to a camera, his back against the arid slopes. I made a mental note to watch the news. Something bad must have happened. Or, maybe, he was just charting a new road map.

The Jewish People have survived several millennia. We are determined to stick around for several more, to see the year 10,000 and the Dow Jones at 100,000. But the history of Jewish sovereignty in the land of Israel has a sketchy past. Jewish kingdoms have existed and fallen, splitting into rival entities, cutting deals against each other with sworn enemies, and repeatedly crumbling under the weight of internal feuds. The current attempt at Jewish statehood in Israel is 55 years old. Its youthful promise has dimmed. Its middle-age is agonizing. What’s next?

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Dispute Resolution under Chapter 18 of the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement

Avraham Azrieli — Tue, 23 Dec 2025 13:01:44 -0500

A 1990 Law Review article by Avraham Azrieli (based on a Graduate Paper during LLM studies at Columbia Law School in New York City): Dispute Resolution under Chapter 18 of the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement – American Review of International Arbitration – Vol. 1, No. 3, 1990

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Improving Arbitration Under the U.S.-Israel Free Trade Agreement: Improving Arbitration Under the U.S.-Israel Free Trade Agreement: A Framework for a Middle-East Free Trade Zone A Framework for a Middle-East Free Trade Zone

Avraham Azrieli — Tue, 23 Dec 2025 12:57:56 -0500

ST. JOHN'S LAW REVIEW
VOLUME 67 SPRING 1993 NUMBER 2
ARTICLES
IMPROVING ARBITRATION UNDER THE
U.S.-ISRAEL FREE TRADE AGREEMENT:
A FRAMEWORK FOR A MIDDLE-EAST
FREE TRADE ZONE
AVRAHAM AZRIELI*

* Associate, Davis Polk & Wardwell, New York; LL.B. Bar-lan University, Israel, 1988;
LL.M. Columbia University, 1990. The views expressed in this article are exclusively the
author's.
ST. JOHN'S LAW REVIEW
[Vol. 67:187
[...]

VI. CONCLUSION
The above discussion has examined each element of the dis-
pute resolution process under the U.S.-Israel FTA. The analysis
clearly shows a substantial need to amend the Agreement and mas-
sively supplement it in almost every aspect. As Judge Lauterpacht
wrote, "most so-called conflicts of interests are due, not to eco-
nomic necessities, but to the imperfections of international legal
organization, in particular to the legal admissibility of force and
the absence of judicial settlement."'
429 The availability of a bind-
ing and effective dispute resolution mechanism is essential to the
success of an international agreement. In the case of the U.S.-
Israel FTA, more than its own success is at stake. The U.S.-Israel
FTA is the only free trade agreement signed by Israel until now
and hence constitutes the only available precedent for a free trade
zone encompassing Israel. Should the ongoing Middle East peace
talks produce the desired results, economic arrangements would
have to follow. In a region so engulfed by nationalism, free trade
would be the only acceptable compromise between a necessary eco-
nomic union and powerful nationalist sentiments.
It is essential that any future Middle East trade agreements
be equipped with a competent dispute resolution process to suc-
cessfully defuse disputes before certain escalation into bloodshed.
It is hoped that the suggestions made in this Article will serve in
the formation of such institutions.

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Talking to the Neighbors - International Herald Tribune

Avraham Azrieli — Tue, 23 Dec 2025 12:50:59 -0500

Talking to the neighbors: It's time Israel embraced the Mideast - Editorials & Commentary - International Herald Tribune

Aug. 29, 2006

PARADISE VALLEY, Arizona — Israel's recent hopes for peace, fueled by the disengagement from Gaza and elections won on plans to cede the West Bank, have given way to another war and to grim talk of eternal fighting. Israelis now speak of the Arabs' hate as a chronic disease that Israel is destined to live - or die - with. To revive its hopes, Israel must dare to consider a change of paradigm: transform itself into a Middle Eastern country.

While Israel has flourished economically and technologically by modeling itself on the Western European culture of its early Ashkenazi pioneers, the cultural alienation from its neighbors has intensified Israel's pariah status in the region. Even the peace with Egypt and Jordan remains cold, while hate toward Israel in the Arab street heats up to new records.

Israel's current predicament is particularly unfortunate: Just as it had once been America's Middle Eastern front against the Soviet Union, it has now become a focal point in the conflict with Iran.

A change of paradigm for the intensely besieged Israeli society would not be easy, and embracing the culture of the enemy could be confusing, if not outright repulsive. Yet it is necessary and possible. Israelis must accept that the people surrounding them are not only their current enemies, but also long-term cohabitants of the same troubled part of the world.

The immediate effort should center on language. Few Israelis speak Arabic, even though it is one of Israel's two official languages, alongside Hebrew. The government should fund a campaign to teach Arabic to every Israeli.

Fluency in Arabic should be a condition for a high- school diploma, for a government job and for a professional license of any kind. National television and radio stations should offer parallel Arabic programming. All government and business documents should be written in both Hebrew and Arabic, all laws adopted in both languages, and agencies should be ready to serve the public in Hebrew and Arabic.

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Complementing its embrace of Arabic, Israel should absorb Arab culture. Israel's decidedly Westernized self-identity has implied a rejection of everything that is Arab. Israelis need to engage in a dialogue with the Arab people in order to understand their aspirations and frustrations.

This should begin by following the Jewish edict that "charity begins at home." Currently, more than 20 percent of Israeli citizens are Arabs, including Muslims, Christians and Druze, many of whom complain of being treated as second-rate citizens. Israel should secure positions for Arabs in the executive, legislative and judicial branches of its government. Public services and facilities in the Arab sector should be brought up to par with the rest of Israel.

Is there a contradiction between Arabism and Zionism? The answer is no. In his seminal work "Old New Land," Theodor Herzl, modern Zionism's founder, envisioned a national homeland that would accept every Jew, not an exclusive state that would reject all others.

The driving force behind the early pioneers' energy was not messianic fantasies of biblical fulfillment, but socialist pragmatism. They sought to create a safe haven from murderous anti-Semitism and to substitute diaspora life with self- ruling Jewish society founded on democracy and equality. (Ironically, both goals failed: Israel is the most dangerous place for Jews in the world today, and its democratic aspirations are suspended by its 30-year military occupation of a large Arab population in the Palestinian territories.)

Nothing in modern Zionism contradicts an acceptance of Arab culture. Some Jews have always sought to understand their neighbors better. My great-grandfather and namesake, the rabbi of a farming community on Mount Carmel a century ago, learned Arabic in order to converse with his neighbors. (Unfortunately, he and his family were massacred while visiting relatives in Hebron during the 1929 Arab riots.)

Would the Arab world accept such a Jewish state into its fold? Islamic extremists aside, Arab society traditionally embraced religious and ethnic pluralism. There are millions of Arabs who are not Muslims, and millions of Muslims who aren't Arabs.

Many religions and ethnic groups have prospered as part of the Arab world, such as the Druze, Kurds, Bahai, Copts, Christians and Jews. Islam itself is permeated with different varieties, most prominently Shiite and Sunni.

Power-sharing between various groups is common in the Arab world because of its diversity of faiths and ethnicities. Jews, in particular, were once prominent in politics, law, medicine and trade throughout the Arab world. Jewish scholars produced prolific works in Arab lands, some forming the mainstream of Judaism, including Maimonides, Nachmanides, Yosef Karo (author of Shulhan Aruch, the definitive code of Jewish law), and the great Jewish poet Ibn Ezra. The Talmud itself was written in what is now Iraq.

Only with the rise of modern Zionism, perceived by the Arabs as a form of European colonialism, were Jews forced to flee Arab countries to Israel, where their culture and language were dismissed as primitive by the Ashkenazi establishment. In hindsight, this original sin has contributed to Israel's sore- thumb status in the region.

Those who would ridicule the idea of a whole nation learning to speak Arabic should remember that a little over 100 years ago, Hebrew was solely a liturgical language. The challenge of turning it into a spoken language was much greater than learning Arabic, an established, rich language spoken by Israel's own minorities and by all its neighbors.

By making Arabic a true national language beside Hebrew, Israel would send a clear message to its neighbors: We respect you and we are here to stay.

The process of shifting from survival by intimidation and isolation to accommodation and dialogue would demonstrate Israel's respect for the Arabs and its desire to belong in the region. Coupled with the eventual settlement of territorial disputes, such a cultural shift would deflate much of the hostility against Israel and marginalize the voices of radical imams.

It would be naïve to contend that Israel could douse overnight the fire raging around it. To paraphrase President Theodore Roosevelt, Israel must "speak Arabic and carry a big stick."

Yet an Israel that accepts its identity as a Middle Eastern country would be harder to demonize. Its efforts would foster a perception of indigenousness and spread seeds of personal bonds that would trickle up to the political and ideological spheres, ultimately reversing the tide of destructive enmity.

With time, the Arabs would discover that the combative Israelis are even more passionate as friends, and thus more valuable as allies than as enemies.

While Israel might still have to live by its sword for a long time, by integrating into the Arab world, a smaller Israel would become an indispensable bridge to the West, a Singapore for the Middle East.

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List of Past Events

Avraham Azrieli — Tue, 23 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Avraham Azrieli speaks to groups and organizations in person and via radio & TV on topics related his books. Links to selected interviews can be found under MEDIA Coverage. For inquiries, please use the CONTACT ME page.

PAST SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS:

Congregation Bet Shalom, Columbia, MD

Congregation Bet Aviv, Columbia, MD

Temple Beth Shalom, Columbia, MD

Myerberg Center, Baltimore, MD

Temple Isaiah, Fulton, MD

Jewish Federation of Howard County, Columbia, MD

Private Club, Columbia, MD

Jewish Book Council, New York, NY

Book Club Appearance, Rockville, MD

Lubavitch Chabad Center, Columbia, MD

Temple Isaiah, Fulton, MD

Book Club Appearance, Columbia, MD

Jewish Federation of Howard County, MD

One More Page Bookstore, Arlington, VA

Winchester Book Gallery, Winchester, VA

Book Club Appearance, Ellicott City, MD

Barnes & Noble, Freehold, NJ

Book Club Appearance, Columbia, MD

Jewish Federation of Howard County, MD

Book Club Appearance, Baltimore, MD

Radio Appearances:

(Some of these interviews are available for listening on the “Press” page of this website)

News Hour, BBC Radio London

The Joan Rivers Show, WOR Network

The Law Show, WAMC Public Radio

The Robb Revere Show

In Love & Business with the Jameses

The Alicia Hill Show

David Serero Talk Radio

The Yaya Diamnd Show

Jim Bohannon Show, Westwood One Radio

Joan Hamburg, WOR Netword

Chuck Harder Show, Talk America Network

Conversations with Anne, Talk Radio Network

News Show, USA Radio Networks

Share Your Thoughts, Talk Radio America Network

Barbara Simpson Show, San Francisco

Bean and Fred, Somerville, MA

The Ruth Eddy Show, Bridgeport, CT

John Arnold Show, Romulus, CT Sound Off,

Green Bay, WI Stevens and Core, Washington DC

WDEI News, Wilmington, DE

Dakota Morning, Fargo, ND

Sybil Tohkonogy Show, Newton, MA

Lifetalk, Austin, TX

Newsline, Seattle, WA

Coffee and Conversation, Bridgeport, CT

Dave White Show, Warrenton, MO

AM Edition, Petoskey, MI

The Great Morning Wakeup, Raleigh, NC

Problem Corner Show, Fairbanks, AK

Rob Lloyd Show, WFAS, White Plains, NY

Hila Esters Christian Radio, TX

Sarasota FL – Dream Chasers Radio Show

Miami FL – The T. Gerard Williams Show

St. Lucia – Unity FM Radio Global

NYC – Cultural News Radio by David Serero

San Antonio, TX – Refocused Magazine Live

Television Appearances:

Steals and Deals, CNBC

Good Day New York, FOX One

One with Steve Adubato, Comcast

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