TaliaTellsTales

Monday, September 21, 2026

There is no "Genocide" in Gaza

(Photo: Tel Aviv demonstration with families and supporters for the release

of the Israeli hostages in Gaza)

THERE IS NO "GENOCIDE" IN GAZA

The bombardment from all sides against Israel and the current war in Gaza has reached a fever pitch. A war that began on October 7 with the Palestinians’ murderous attack on Israeli civilians has now turned its head against those who have been offering peace.

For almost 80 years, the Palestinians—only named as such in 1964, with the adoption of their charter—have refused to accept Israel’s existence. Time and again, they have launched wars and, failing to achieve their goal of annihilating Israel, have cried out about injustice while refusing to take responsibility for the consequences for their own people and to accept Israel’s peace offerings. For them, peace is not an alternative to the suffering of their population.

These are the people who are not separate from Hamas because they are the ones who built an immense network of tunnels, indoctrinated their children to hate and kill Jews, and, most recently, aided in hiding many of the Israeli hostages. They are the ones who streamed into the battered Israeli villages to pillage and loot. They are the ones who, according to polls, supported the October 7 attack.

Generation after generation, these are young people whose parents put guns in their hands at the age of five and send them to Hamas after-school programs, whose mothers express hope and pride that their children would die as martyrs. They are the underage terrorists who fill the ranks of Hamas.

You may think of it in another way: In Nazi Germany, there were Germans who risked their entire families in order to save a single Jew. Yet not one Palestinian tried to do something for the hostages, even after Israel offered $5,000,000 and a safe passage out of Gaza to any informant and their family for information that would lead to a hostage.

Through the international criticism of Israel’s lingering war in Gaza—and especially the blood libel of genocide thrown around so freely and frequently that it has become, in many minds, “a fact”—there has been little attempt to understand the conflict from the point of view of traumatized Israelis.

Let’s take a look internally at what Israelis think about the war, using the lens of the upcoming Israeli election on October 27. If the war in Gaza represents a humanitarian crisis of starvation and the intentional killing of Palestinians, wouldn’t this argument be at the top of the political campaigns of those opposing Netanyahu?

Of all five leading candidates opposing Netanyahu—all good guys, mostly with military backgrounds—not one has objected to the existential war against Hamas that began on October 7, but which has a long history going back decades.

Not one is accusing the government of genocide.

To make this easy to understand, I asked AI to summarize the positions of each of these candidates so that my friends can grasp the common denominator: all of them—even those on the left—understand that there is a ruthless enemy that poses an existential threat to Israel. They differ greatly over how to move forward.

Here it is:

Israel’s next Knesset election is scheduled for October 27, 2026. The opposition is unusually broad ideologically: it includes right-wing, centrist, and left-wing figures. That is particularly important when looking at Gaza, because opposing Netanyahu does not necessarily mean opposing his basic war objectives.

Based on the latest polling and reporting, the five most significant anti-Netanyahu contenders/groups are Gadi Eisenkot, Naftali Bennett, Yair Lapid, Yair Golan, and Avigdor Lieberman. Reuters identifies these as the principal rival camps.

The candidates’ Positions on the Gaza war

Gadi Eisenkot

Hawkish, but wants a different strategy. He argues Netanyahu has failed because Hamas remains in power. Eisenkot supports replacing Hamas with another governing structure, including potentially a Palestinian technocratic administration, while maintaining Israeli security control/a security corridor. He favors using diplomacy alongside military pressure and is open to phased reconstruction tied to disarmament. He does not support a Palestinian state in the near or medium term.

Naftali Bennett

Very hawkish. Bennett says his Gaza policy is fundamentally different from Netanyahu’s because he favors a much more aggressive “zero tolerance” security policy. He has criticized Netanyahu for allowing Hamas to rebuild and has opposed Palestinian statehood. On Gaza, he is not advocating an Israeli withdrawal or a peace settlement; his emphasis is eliminating Hamas as a military threat.

Yair Lapid

Hawkish on Hamas, but more diplomatic. Lapid says Israel should not have ended up in the current situation in Gaza and argues that Egypt should become the principal outside power managing Gaza. He wants Hamas removed from power and disarmed, but believes Israel should combine military pressure with diplomacy, Egyptian involvement and reconstruction. He has also criticized the Netanyahu government’s handling of Palestinian civilians and Gaza’s humanitarian situation.

Yair Golan

Most explicitly oriented toward a political/diplomatic restructuring of Gaza. Golan proposes ending Hamas rule and replacing it with a Palestinian technocratic government, with Arab and international involvement. His plan incorporates the U.S.-backed Gaza roadmap, phased reconstruction in areas cleared of Hamas, international supervision and pressure on Hamas to disarm. Unlike Bennett and Eisenkot, Golan has expressed conditional support in principle for a demilitarized Palestinian state as part of a regional agreement, although he says the issue is not currently ripe for implementation.

Avigdor Lieberman

Very hawkish toward Hamas. Lieberman has long argued that Israel was too soft toward Hamas and has called for dismantling Hamas’s rule. In 2026 he has criticized Netanyahu for failing to defeat Hamas and has said that, after the election, Hamas should be disarmed and dismantled. He has also criticized ceasefire arrangements when he believes they leave Hamas intact.

None of these five is campaigning on simply ending Israel’s military conflict with Hamas and withdrawing from Gaza. Even the more dovish opposition figures generally say that Hamas must lose its military and governing capacity and that Israel must retain substantial security guarantees. Reuters notes that the opposition’s criticism has largely been about how Netanyahu has conducted the war and what political outcome he has achieved, rather than rejecting Israel’s use of force against Hamas.

The meaningful differences are more about what happens after Hamas:

* Bennett: security first; strongly opposed to Palestinian statehood.

* Eisenkot: Hamas must go, but military pressure needs to be combined with diplomacy and a workable post-Hamas administration.

* Lieberman: very hard line against Hamas; emphasizes defeating and dismantling it.

* Lapid: Hamas must go, but Egypt should play the central role in administering Gaza and facilitating reconstruction.

* Golan: the clearest advocate of an internationally/Arab-supported Palestinian technocratic alternative to Hamas, with a possible eventual political horizon for Palestinian statehood.

(Bennett and Lapid are running together on the “Beyachad/Together” ticket, so their Gaza policies should be understood as a joint political project, even though their personal histories and ideological emphases differ).

Back to me, Talia.

What is not reflected in the above is that the huge criticism against Netanyahu is about internal affairs that range from his judicial reform, corruption of the ultra-Orthodox, and the rule of the far-right ideology. I'm not getting into this now, but I just want to add it as a perspective that when I and tens of thousands of Israelis like me who live abroad will fly to Israel to vote on October 27 (there is no voting by mail) it will be because of the poor, corrupt, and egomaniac leadership.

I hope that this post will help you understand that Israel is at war with a murderous enemy, whose ranks a filled by their own people who do not seek peace with Jews and Israel. The Palestinians, starting with their 1964 charter committing to the destruction of Israel, are the ones screaming publicly at every opportunity their genocidal intentions against the Jews.

Golda Meir had said, “If the Arabs lay their arms, there will be peace. If Israel lays down its arms, there will be no Israel.”

Wednesday, May 13, 2026

My presentation of THE BOY WITH THE STAR TATTOO

I am breaking tradition when I post publicly an excerpt of my book presentation of

THE BOY WITH THE STAR TATTOO.

Here it is, my presentation at the Hamptons Synagogue, which was recorded and appeared recently in the JBC's program: https://jbstv.org/archives/40383

Two years of book touring for THE BOY WITH THE STAR TATTOO have been incredibly gratifying—and perhaps record-breaking: 150 in-person events, mostly to audiences of 75 to 300 attendees, with some as large as 500—and even 700, as at the BNC in Phoenix, AZ. We lost count of the numerous Zoom presentations, which were an honor to deliver, allowing me to visit and connect with communities I could not reach in person. I am forever grateful to book clubs, whose members continue to select this novel for lively discussions—and then spread the word to others. Each reader is a blessing.

A significant boost against the tide of anti-Semitic campaigns came with the honor bestowed upon the novel by the Jewish Book Council, which awarded it the seal of Finalist (#2) in the Book Club category.

The year 2025 was the most difficult of my life. It began with the precipitous decline of my husband Ron’s health, followed by his shocking passing on June 3. My readers, event coordinators, and book reviewers who praised my latest work helped sustain me through the many difficult months that followed. You all reminded me that beneath the grief, there was still an independent person—a novelist with a creative mind.

I am remiss in not sending out an updated newsletter, Talia Tells Tales, while I now spend my spring of 2026 in Paris. This city, which has inspired so many renowned authors, is now the place where I am returning to writing my seventh novel. I began it in 2024, even travelled to a remote corner of Europe for research. I had written over 100 pages when I put the manuscript aside to focus on caregiving and book touring. When I reopened it on my PC for the first time in 16 months and read it with fresh eyes, I was delighted by how compelling the story remained—and, I must say, how well-written those pages were. Had it really been me who wrote them?

There is a reason I do not discuss the theme and contents of a novel until the manuscript is complete and revised a few times: I cannot commit to the story until it finds its rhythm. Characters take unexpected turns, new moral dilemmas arise, and the storyline often shifts.

Stay tuned! In the meantime, there are six novels of mine for you to explore. Please visit my website, www.TaliaCarner.com to check them out and read the first few chapters of each. I promise you’ll find your next compelling read!

Thursday, October 30, 2025

From "Licking The Windows" to Licking My Wounds

(This blog expands on my Talia Tells Tales November 2025 newsletter. )

I am expanding on my incredible life in Paris in a blog, but will start here by explaining that since Esther, the protagonist of JERUSALEM MAIDEN, ran off to Paris and I had to chase her around the cobblestoned alleys, the Francophile in me reawakened.

You see, I attended a French high school in Tel-Aviv, and even passed the dreaded matriculation exam ("Le Bac"). In recent years, I've traveled to Paris twice a year, treating myself to French culinary, artistic, and architectural delights.

I am squeezed on a banquet bench at a Parisian café. Among the two dozen people scattered around bistro tables, conversations are flying in both French and English. The aroma of brewing coffee is in the air inside, while in the street outside the large windows, autumn’s leaves float, undecided whether to land on the sidewalk, or to glide a bit further into the Seine.

The man on my left, visiting from a remote island off Australia, tells how his father had arrived in that uninhabited place in the 1950s. On my right, a French journalist details her 1968 harrowing escape from Czechoslovakia on the last train as the Russians were invading. Across from me, a Frenchman explains why even at the end of World War II the German economy was set out to become the strongest in Europe today.

This “conversation meeting” is one of five weekly exchanges I attend, where Francophones mingle with Anglophones, each seeking to improve their language skills of the other’s language. What comes out of these international encounters, is a kaleidoscope of fascinating stories.

This evening, when the meeting ends, my friend Sue organizes a small group to move to a nearby Irish pub. We eat, drink, and laugh. I met Sue a few years ago at a recital on one of my frequent trips to Paris. This past Yom Kippur, I attended services at her synagogue, conducted in French by an American rabbi, with an Israeli cantor. Each of the two evenings was beautiful. The rabbi’s talk about the Jews’ commitment to Israel irrespective of politics but rather to the idea of Zion and the existential threat to Israel was critical at this time. Most significant for me was that, unlike in many streams of Judaism, I was permitted to say Kaddish for Ron.

It’s been a long day. I have had three planned activities before this late dinner. Sue and I take the Metro together since we live near the same station. Yet at the exit, when she turns into the side street, I head the other way, toward the bridge over the Seine. Within a few steps I am treated to the majestical sight of the Eiffel Tower, my current neighbor. It sparkles against the night sky, the reflections of its illuminations break into a million smaller pinprick lights in the inky water.

Back in my apartment, I kick off my walking shoes, one of three pairs I only wear in Paris, rotating them daily. I would never dare show up anywhere in the US with such functional footwear. Unlike the US, there is no mail to sort out, or packages to open. Earlier this morning, I cleaned my rental apartment and took the bed linens to the laundry service because the dryer, which is supposed to be built into the washing machine, doesn’t work. Still, at this moment, when the world outside falls away, calm sets on me. This is my queendom, where I will soon click open my phone photo app and scroll through Ron’s photos and videos. It’s my time alone with him. The acute pain of the loss has somewhat dulled these past two months in Paris, but my emotions are still too raw for TV news. I only watch documentaries in French to help improve my language skills.

I check my WhatsApp group messages. In my Museum Explorers’ group there’s a thread about a trip ten of us will take to a new exhibition. I comment that I’d bought a ticket, and then post about the exclusive interior design show on Saturday to which I have an extra ticket. I respond to a woman who asks who would like to join her on a visit to the Cléopatra exhibit on Friday, then I inform another member that I’ll meet her at the open-air art fair on Sunday. I’ve only seen these two women at some get-togethers and know that once I spend some time with each, I’ll make yet two new friends.

These art excursions are added to my visit last Friday to Petit Palais (Jean-Baptiste Greuse) with a French acquaintance, and this past Tuesday to Musée D’Orsay (John Singer Sergent) with another, who turned out to be an art historian. Last week I participated in an exclusive visit with the French Heritage Society at M19, a large modern center that houses 700 craft artisans who embroider for all haute-couture, such as Yves Saint Laurent, Chanel, and Dior as well as for major home décor outfits that create the embellished curtains and hand-woven upholstery seen in chateaux.

In between, I’ve taken walks with Barbara and Gloria, exploring markets near the Canal St. Martin; with Yael who is an expert on the ancient history of the Fifth arrondissement starting with the Middle Ages; with Anne (a Frenchwoman), who guided me through hidden spots in Le Marais. There are days I clock between 12,000 to 18,000 steps a day. Even in days I take public transportation, I clock over 7,000 steps.

In the very few open windows in my calendar these past two weeks I’ve played Mah-Jongg, joined a dozen women to cook a lunch at one’s home, and dropped in on three separate regular 10 AM socializing taking place at specific cafés around the city.

In slightly more than this two-week period, in the evenings I’ve been to the Opera Bastille to see La Bohème, was invited to two local friends’ homes for dinner, and had girls’ dinners, and outings with American visitors and a theater critique. I’ve been to a Toastmasters meeting and to an organ concert at the St. Sulpice church (a place I particularly cherish since it’s the location of some important action in my novel JERUSALEM MAIDEN). Twice I joined a young friend for late bar outings (too noisy), where I had interesting conversations with Italians, Portuguese, and Croatians, and I advised a French diplomat in which of their US consulates he should be stationed (Miami).

In two social early evening receptions that I attended (what the French call “Apéro”), I engaged in a conversation with a retired Egyptian cardiologist and listened to a botanist couple who’ve accepted a winter assignment in New Zealand to count the koala population. (Hint: by sniffing the fresh poop; it smells like eucalyptus.) I agree that sniffing koala poop is preferable to the brutally cold Parisian winter.

Back in 2013 I wrote a blog about the quirks of the French language, in which window shopping was called “Licking the windows” to indicate the hunger that the sight of a Parisian window shopping evoked. As I am licking my wounds over Ron’s stupendous loss, I am finding the path of joy in being overly active in Paris.

It’s now the top of the hour, and the Eiffel Tower erupts into a burst of sparkles, like the largest birthday candle, telling me it’s time to turn off my lights and get ready for a busy day tomorrow of packing to go home.

# # #

Every Sunday 10 AM, at La Coupole, organized by Terrance
(Link below)

Links to organizations and sources:

AmericanWomen in Paris

WICE

FrenchHeritage Society

TerranceGelenter

AdrianLeeds, Pares-Midi

MeetUp French-English Conversationalists 50+

InterNations

Toastmasters of Paris

The American Library in Paris

Friday, September 26, 2025

How The Women's Movement Disappointed Me

(This article originally appeared in Women's e-News in April 2024, but was later removed, further making the point of this piece: even criticism of the women's movement is unacceptable.)

n 1977-79, a newcomer to the USA, I went through a horrific divorce. My then-husband’s assertion in the papers he filed with the court was that I had “joined the liberated women” and therefore was unsuitable to mother our two girls, the youngest of whom was a newborn. He, who traveled internationally two weeks a month—and was rarely home the rest of the time—sought full custody.

I found myself fighting in court the entire range of feminist ideas which I had expressed—and to which my-not-soon-enough-to-be ex brought in a string of witnesses to testify. It included my male therapist because the judge evoked without precedent the patient-therapist confidentiality, decreeing that “the mother’s mental state is in question.” None of the witnesses had found fault in either my mothering or mental stability, only testified that I had said that men had it better in this world; that women were no less smart and capable than men; that women should have equal rights to men under both the law and social norms.

That’s it. A mother who decried to friends and the marriage counselor that women were underappreciated in our society must be unstable. The judge ordered a temporary support of $25 a month at a time when even welfare would have given me $300 for the three of us. He also warned my lawyer that if I took a job, I would not be able to claim to be the main caretakers to these babies. Any mother’s work-for-pay would level the playing field against a mostly absent father.

The father of my babies now had an excellent incentive not to settle. He could never get a better deal in a divorce than paying only $25 a month while he was traipsing the world. He hired a live-in housekeeper, forced me out of the house by violence, and for almost two years rejected a court date for a divorce hearing which he had initiated.

I did not yet have the lexicon of feminism, but I knew gross injustice and prejudice against me, formerly a career woman and now a full-time mother, studying for my Master’s degree at mostly night classes.

I called a local chapter of National Organization for Women (NOW), only to hear their phone recordings informing callers that they did not get involved in divorce cases. I showed up at anther chapter’s meeting, hoping to be directed to the right resources since divorce touched almost 50% of women—and my case must be of interest to feminists for its outcome would create a precedent in the State of New York. But NOW was engaged in the rights of gay women, a topic then-affecting 10% of women.

I was alone and at a loss where to find a feminist witness who would explain in court how normal were the sentiments I expressed. The influence of my worldview was not yet known since my daughters were still so young. That also meant that if I would give birth in the future to a third female baby, she should be taken away from me.

It took a barracuda lawyer and some dishonest maneuvering—as well as all of my parents’ savings—to grant me the divorce. The judge, enamored with the new concept of “joint custody,” imposed on me a partnership with a man who, failing to keep the court-ordered schedule of alternate days for the rest of my children’s growing years, terrified them when he showed up after an absence accompanied by a policeman.

Over the decades, as I matured to become an advocate for women’s issues and rights, my sensitivity to the plight of oppressed and disenfranchised women increased. Among the projects I tackled at the 1995 International Women’s Conference in Beijing was helping Egyptian women develop a campaign against the legalization of clitoridectomy. Egypt, the most advanced country in the eyes of other African nations, was setting the tone for the others. The then-Egyptian Minister of Health, a gynecologist, held that the clitoris was a cause of driving teenage girls crazy, especially if they wore synthetic panties. Better nip it before it caused problems for all society.

I sought the support of feminist leaders who peppered the landscape of the conference. None was willing to get involved in “a religious matter.”

That reluctance to speak up against the oppression of women in Muslim societies—and fight for the liberation of women from laws that allowed husbands to beat and kill them, that barred women from schooling and work-for-pay, that stoned disobedient wives without a trial, that prohibited a woman from stepping out of her house unless accompanied by someone with a penis (even if that penis belonged to an eight-year old), became more obvious as world events rolled in, emblazoned with a backward time-travel. The Western feminist movement’s respect of Islam even in its extreme forms has trumped the ways in which that culture was inherently very bad for women’s bodies, mental health, and life.

What was the feminist movement engaged in during those passing decades? In 1982 we lost the fight for the Equal Rights Amendment, never to be ratified nationwide since. Strides were made in removing open workplace discrimination, and shrinking the gap—not eliminating—the women’s work pay when compared with men’s. The portrayal of women in the media has improved greatly, albeit the objectification of their bodies in underground pornography exploded. Interestingly, the formerly reviled semi-clad models of the pinup calendars now took front news as female celebrities strut in insubstantial attires and make their public almost-nudity Politically Correct. Feminists claim that women could wear whatever they wish, even as it entices tweens to emulate provocative getups and moves. The onus is on men to not get sexually aroused.

One issue that I supported wholeheartedly was the freedom of reproductive rights. After the spectacular achievement of Roe vs. Wade, a couple of generations of women enjoyed the freedom to decide if, when, and how often their bodies reproduced. Sadly, attrition in the battle to reverse this right has shut down women’s health clinics by the dozens, until the movement lost the war. Licking its wounds, it may manage to regroup and strategize a comeback. In the meantime, I ache for my granddaughters’ generation.

The awakening of “MeToo” was the slow yawn of an hibernating bear. At Redbook magazine, where I worked in the early 1980s, we did a survey about sexual harassment in partnership with Harvard Business Review and published those findings. The issue went nowhere for a very long while.

Until it did.

Violence against women in all its forms is not OK, our feminist leaders have agreed. They have championed legislation against unwanted touching, verbal comments, locker-room atmosphere—and of course rape, also defined as exertion of perceived hierarchal power, even if no physical force is applied. Prominent men were finally dethroned from their lofty spots in media and corporations. Decades-old sexual exploitations complaints were won both in public opinion and in courtrooms.

The UN, a puppet organization that, on a rotating basis, has given the helms of guarding the rights and safety of women worldwide to countries such as Iran and Somalia, had long declared various “days” in support of women: International Women’s Day (March 8); World Population Day (July 11); International Equal Pay Day (September 18); International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women (November 25).

Then October 7 happened.

Hundreds of Israeli women were not “merely” gang-raped, but tortured by sex-crazed Hamas terrorists who broke their limbs, chopped their breasts, and shot nails into their vaginas. Women who survived and were dragged to Gaza, have been imprisoned now for five months, gang-raped and beaten daily, repeatedly, by porno-demented sadists.

The silence of the feminist movement—or whatever can be defined as such in the absence of outstanding focal leaders— about this extreme sexual violence has been deafening. In fact, many female activists have joined the ranks of pro-Hamas demonstrators, of useful idiots calling to “free Palestine” (which means in that vernacular the elimination of Israel and the genocide of its people), of anti-Semitic calls for “a ceasefire”—as if it wasn’t Hamas that had broken every ceasefire, including the one on October 6. As if Hamas couldn’t stop the war on October 8 or any time thereafter by releasing the hostages and surrendering. As if in this war between Israel, a sovereign state, and Hamas, a terrorist group, Israeli women’s tortures and rapes were an acceptable collateral damage.

Or as if it hasn’t even happened.

UN Women, in the meantime, was silent, as unresponsive as the strewn burned victims of the Hamas massacre to the prodding of Israeli women’s organizations, Jewish organizations, and people of conscience that demanded it to declare its disgust and to condemn both the massacre and the lingering inhuman treatment of Israeli hostages. NOW finally issued a neutral statement against using rape as a tool of war, without condemning—or even specifically mentioning—the brutality of Hamas against Israeli women.

On my radar screen, only one Second-Wave feminists, Phyllis Chesler, Jewish and in her 80s, has been excoriating the remaining feminists of her generation for their failure to condemn the atrocity visited upon Israeli women. Where are the younger feminists?

Last month, on February 12, I lit a yellow candle for the release of the young women hostages. I allowed myself the stabling pain of uttering their names—Agam, Eden, Doron, Shiri, Noa, Karina, Arbel, Liri, Amit, Carmel, Daniella, Naama, Romi—and imagining them being tortured and raped at that very same moment. I was certain that they were unaware that this date was the UN’s International Day for the Prevention of Violent Extremism as and when Conducive to Terrorism.

As was, so it seemed, the rest of the world.

# # #

Talia Carner is a novelist whose heart-wrenching suspense and historical fiction expose society’s ills speak for those without voice. www.TaliaCarner.com

Monday, August 4, 2025

Eulogizing Ron Carner

Ron Carner, May 19, 1939--June 3, 2025

I delivered a shorter version of this eulogy at Ron's funeral.

Please scroll to bottom for links to videos of Ron

Several times over the years, Ron said to me, “If you eulogize me, do not talk about me in the past tense.”

I responded, “You won’t be able to tell me what to do.”

How could I have imagined the day I would be eulogizing you, a giant of a man, one who lived large and savored every moment of life with hunger for more? Ron was—is—a man who opened his eyes in the morning and thought that the sky had never been this blue, the birds had never chirped so beautifully, and there had never been a more beautiful woman to be found by a man’s side.

It took tremendous energy to keep up with Ron’s pace of hopping on a plane to London to catch a couple of shows, and two days later start a skiing day on top of a Vermont mountain at minus fifty wind chill factor. Until his mid-seventies, there wasn’t a mountain Ron didn’t want to climb or a river he didn’t plan to raft down its white waters.

Did I mention Ron’s reverence of balls? There was not one he didn’t love—round, oval, rubber, or covered in cowhide—to throw, hit, bounce, catch, kick, dribble, or pass—or watch others do it.

In the years he practiced law, the charismatic Ron did particularly well with juries. Older jurors viewed him as their son, young ones as a father figure, his contemporary males as the guys’ guy that he was, and the female jurors, oh, well, he was really cute.

Ron grew up in a loving family, where he was pampered by his grandmother who lived with them, and adored by his parents and his brother who was five years older. A good student, a star athlete, and a favorite among both boys and girls, all Ron knew was acceptance and love. Not a single bad thing happened to him until the big one, when Ron was twenty-five, and his father suddenly died.

It was from that river of love that Ron was able to ladle out endless goodness to share—with me, the children, his friends, and the Jewish world.

Today, June 5th, the day of his funeral, the Six-Day War broke in Israel in 1967. Holding his transistor close to his ear for days on end, Ron became aware of how fundamental Israel was to his identity as a Jew.

By the time I met Ron, he held strong Jewish values and was a committed Zionist, which soon found their purpose in his volunteer work for Maccabi USA. A born leader, who loved interacting with young people, Ron went on to devote 38 years influencing not only American Jewish youth, but also those in South and Central America and beyond. To advance women’s participation, it was not enough to just form US-Jewish women’s teams; they needed to compete against other countries. Ron travelled indefatigably to encourage and cajole Maccabi leaderships everywhere to form more women’s teams. Then he went on to expand international participation by developing the Masters’ program. Not surprisingly, the more mature athletes, enthusiastic to participate in their respective sports, helped fund the huge operational cost. Some became major donors when they witnessed the greatest involvement of Jewish youth with Israel and with Diaspora’s members of our tribe.

With every participating athlete came a family and a circle of friends who accompanied them to the Games—and thus reasserted their Jewish roots. Every two years, when Ron walked into the stadium at an opening ceremony of either the Maccabiah or a Regional Game in Europe or South and Central America, he felt triumphant. His greatest rewards were when people told him how the Games changed their lives and brought them back into the fold of Judaism.

When I met Ron in 1978, all this was in the future. What captured my heart was not just that he was funny, romantic, and handsome, but that he was a feminist. He sent me to “a Conscious Raising” group to navigate a world steeped with power imbalance, and then he proceeded to relinquish some of his own power in order to have a wife who was an equal partner. Cocooned in the comfort of his love, I grew wings and flew to wherever my abilities would take me. Only a secure male could do that.

Above all, Ron’s core was our family, the tight unit we created. From our first lunch in 1978, when Ron and I surprised ourselves by talking about our future together, he forged forward toward that goal: he maintained three homes so we could all be together, shopped, navigated the children’s conflicting schedules, and orchestrated our activities. Ron, our patriarch, was a lifeforce. His delight was to see our four children grow into amazing adults, who are blessedly close.

Over the years, many people watched Ron’s awe of the world, his athleticism, and his full, multi-faceted life and said that if there was life after life, they would have liked to come back as Ron Carner.

They didn’t even know that he sang in the shower.

Ronnie, you were right. You cannot be in the past tense. You, your spirit, your generosity, and your moral compass will forever be present in everyone you’ve touched. Especially in me.

# # #

LINKS: Please watch Ron live on some of the many videos publicly available:

Ron was very proud to be a recipient of Maccabi's Yakir award for his dedication and enormous contribution to the movement. Here is the link to him being featured as Legend of Maccabi of and another Tribute to him by Maccabi USA.

A great interview on Jewish Broadcasting Corporation (JBC) with Rabbi Mark Golub.

Ron was very proud when he was nominated for James Madison High School's "Wall of Distinction," populated by luminary alumni Nobel Laureates, politicians and Justices. Here is a link to his acceptance speech.

The New York Times obituary