In our latest #0dot2 video, Alan Dershowitz answers” “What does it mean to be Jewish?”
Professor Alan M. Dershowitz has been called “the nation’s most peripatetic civil liberties lawyer” and one of its “most distinguished defenders of individual rights,” “the best-known criminal lawyer in the world,” “the top lawyer of last resort,” “America’s most public Jewish defender” and “Israel’s single most visible defender – the Jewish state’s lead attorney in the court of public opinion.”
He is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. Dershowitz, a graduate of Brooklyn College and Yale Law School, joined the Harvard Law School faculty at age 25 after clerking for Judge David Bazelon and Justice Arthur Goldberg.
He has also published more than 1,000 articles in magazines, newspapers, journals and blogs such as The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, Huffington Post, Newsmax, Jerusalem Post and Ha’aretz.
Professor Dershowitz is the author of 30 fiction and non-fiction works with a worldwide audience, including The New York Times #1 bestseller “Chutzpah” and five other national bestsellers. His autobiography, “Taking the Stand: My Life in the Law,” was published in October 2013 by Crown, a division of Random House. Earlier titles include “an exceptional, action packed book,” “The Trials of Zion,” a novel which has been called “a thought-provoking page turner;” “Rights From Wrongs;” “The Case For Israel;” “The Case For Peace;” Blasphemy;” “Preemption;” “Finding Jefferson;” and “Shouting Fire.”
In 1983, the Anti-Defamation League of the B’nai B’rith presented him with the William O. Douglas First Amendment Award for his “compassionate eloquent leadership and persistent advocacy in the struggle for civil and human rights.” In presenting the award, Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel said: “If there had been a few people like Alan Dershowitz during the 1930s and 1940s, the history of European Jewry might have been different.”
B’nai B’rith International has launched the Zero.Dot.Two Initiative (#0dot2) ahead of its 175th anniversary to discuss ideas around Jewish identity, to educate social media users about Judaism as a proactive way to combat anti-Semitism and to promote the Jewish connection to the State of Israel through the voices of many online influencers. With approximately 14.4 million Jewish individuals alive today, we represent approximately 0.2% of global citizens.