Who is Solomon?

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Contact:
solomon =at= solomonia =dot= com
MSM at the same address.
AIM: SolomoniaBlog
Twitter
Steam

Feedback and pointers to items of potential interest are welcome and encouraged. Email, particularly of a rude, hateful or abusive nature may be shared publicly. Requests for privacy or anonymity from polite and friendly emailers will be honored.

Solomonia ("Solomon" with an "ia" at the end) is the web log of Martin 'Solomon.'

I am the owner of this site. I was born, grew-up and live in the Boston area. I'm a long time liberal and son of liberals. A perennial voter for the Democratic Party. A Reagan-hater and two-time Clinton voter. Somewhere along the line, something happened, however.

I became one of those people, like David Horowitz, who began to have "second thoughts." (Does that make me a "neo-con?") This blog is the product of those thoughts. It's a way to sort of make notes to myself and maybe vent a bit about the things I read. If others would like to stop by and get something out of it, so much the better.

What triggered the change? I'm sure in great measure it's the typical story - 9/11. My second thoughts had already begun, but I may not have felt the push to put up a web page if it were not for that date. I started noticing, more than ever, the anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism so prominent in much of the world and wanted to start speaking out about it. As a secular American Jew, I've never felt any drive to trumpet my ethnic background - quite the opposite. But, as a self-identifying secular American Jew, I do not run from it. I started to realize that I needed to be one of the people speaking out and putting my voice behind the things I believed in, even if only in a very small way, like through this page. If you'd like to get a sense of where I'm coming from, you can read about what I think.

I may just put up pointers to articles of note, I may offer a comment or thought, some short, some much longer. The funny thing is, I had no concept of this thing called the "blogosphere" when I started in on this (OK, so no one ever accused me of being overly quick on the uptake.), but I've quickly discovered there are loads of people out there doing the same thing - many better, but who cares, this place is mine, and I welcome you to it.

To be continued...daily.

Here is a link to my Normblog Profile

Here is a link to my Best Of Page with a rough list of posts pulled out of the pile for one reason or another. (Now woefully out of date.)

Here is a link to my LibraryThing Catalog

To support this site: (Do you find this site holds some value for you? Encourage me to keep it going. Leave a tip.)
Donate through Paypal
Make a purchase through Amazon (I receive a small percentage of any purchase you make through this link. It costs you nothing extra.)

The opinions expressed on this site are mine and mine alone, or the opinion of the particular co-blogger and theirs alone. In no case should anything said here be construed as a statement on behalf of any organization that I, or any of the others, may be affiliated with unless it is expressly stated as being so. These are personal opinions. We are responsible only for ourselves.

A note on the banner graphics: The backgrounds are from various sites, and are either public domain or from graphics or wallpaper sites I found. I have either tried to contact the artist for permission and didn't hear back, or they have been kicking around my hard drive so long I no longer have any idea where they came from. If you are the copyright owner and object to my use of your work, simply contact me and I will remove it immediately.

Back to the main blog page.

Co-Bloggers:

Co-Blogger: Mary Madigan

Mary Madigan has traveled in, and blogs about, the Middle East, Europe and the USA. She's a Jeffersonian liberal who believes that "it will be more easy to raise ships and men to fight these pirates into reason, than money to bribe them."

Her personal blog is Exit Zero. She can be contacted directly at whataretheysaying =at= yahoo =dot= com

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Co-Blogger: Emmet Trueman

Emmet Trueman is a widely-published scholar with a commitment to disinterested, evidence-based scholarship. He will post primarily on areas related to the academic attack on Israel and the Jews.

Co-Blogger: Binah

Binah is a former academic living and working in the Boston area. He owes much of his education, scientific and otherwise, to the University of Maryland and Stanford University.

His "home" blog is Kavanna. He can be contacted directly at kavanna.blogspot =at= gmail =daught= com

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Co-Blogger: Sophia

Sophia is an artist and an Oriental dancer. She is trained as an art historian and has a deep interest in Middle Eastern and Central Asian art, with a particular focus on North African, Turkish, Persian and tribal textiles including the work of Berber, Kurdish and Turkic women. She's a firm believer in art and culture as bridges between people, as a way of foreshortening time.

"I was first exposed to Oriental music in Temple as a child. The cantors affected me deeply. I think the music led me to the dance but also to an ongoing study of history as well as Middle Eastern culture. Recently I've been focusing on Sephardic music and its overlaps with Arabic, Balkan, Andalusian and Turkish traditions. The vision of Jews as strangers to the Middle East is a falsehood. Our connections to the Orient are ancient and deep and we span East/West divides and thousands of years of time.

"I've been reading history as a hobby since I was a child. My grandparents fled the pogroms in Russia, making their way painfully to America. They saved pennies to plant trees in the Mandate even as they lost their house to the Depression. I remember Israel's wars back to the 1950's, my mother's anguish in 1967.

"I am concerned about the situation of the Palestinian people and hope to see them in a secure, self-determining state - but fail to see how victimizing the Israeli people can create a just or lasting peace.

"In recent years I've been shocked by antisemitism on the blogosphere, which is becoming increasingly mainstream.

I'm concerned with hypocritical policies regarding human rights. As a person of the Left, I don't see how we can be progressive at home yet support repression abroad.

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A note to fellow bloggers concerning blogroll linking: Like any blogger, I appreciate any link I can get, and I thank you in advance for including me on your blogroll if you have done so. I'm hardly the most linked to person in the blogosphere, but the thing is this, even at this point if I reciprocated to everyone who linked me by linking back, my blogroll would be lengthy beyond the point that it would have any value to be on it.

So what that means is, I can't guarantee a place on the blogroll just because you placed me on yours, though I still appreciate it. I mean, not to seem ungrateful or too big for my britches or anything, but that's the way it is. Feel free to let me know if you added me, but please don't get angry if I don't return the favor right away.

A few things that increase chances of being linked: 1) Be at least vaguely on the same page with me in the areas I cover. My blogroll is something of a "recommended blogs" list, so I want readers to know they'll be hitting sites that at least aren't terribly at odds with my world view (not that I am responsible for anything appearing on any site but this one, of course). 2) The site must be updated regularly -- more than once a week is best, otherwise it's only marginally a blog, y'know? I regularly go through my blogroll and remove blogs that haven't been updated in a couple of months. If you've been dropped by me for this reason, but have started back up again and promise to keep going this time, drop me a line and I will add you back (believe me, I hate de-linking people for any reason!). 3) I have to think that I'll be taking a look at your blog from time to time, so it's got to interest me, and the design can't be such that I just can't look at it (I have trouble with jet-black backgrounds, for instance).

Finally, blogs in the drop-down list are blogs I like but that don't link back. Shame, shame, shame. If you are on it and add me to your blogroll, I'll be happy to move you to the public list as well.