After two decades, peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians have failed to bear fruit or bring about two independent states for two peoples. Recent polls demonstrate that as a result, Israelis and Palestinians are growing skeptical about the viability of a two-state solution. However, the most commonly discussed alternative, a single state with equal rights [...]
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(JTA) – Israel’s new unity government may not alter Jerusalem’s strategy for curbing Iran’s nuclear weapons program or do much to revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. It could, however, dramatically change something at home about which a huge number of Israelis care deeply: haredi Orthodox exemptions from military service. For years, haredi issues have been [...]
Read More »NEW YORK (JTA) — With the contemporary music world buzzing about Regina Spektor’s upcoming album more than a month before its release, I cannot help but think about the young musician’s rise in the context of Russian-speaking Jewry. Spektor, who came to the United States with her parents when she was a young girl, still [...]
Read More »This year’s Yom HaShoah commemoration was, as were all of our past commemorations, moving and heartbreaking. This year’s, however, was utterly remarkable and several people are to be commended for their role in creating our remembrance. First, thank you to Melissa Hamilton, a caring, soft-spoken violist with the Tucson Symphony Orchestra, who went through much [...]
Read More »It is remarkable how much press secular humanist Judaism is getting these days! I was delighted to read the article in the last AJP about Judaism without God (“Can religion, especially Judaism, work if you don’t believe in God?” AJP 4/20/12). A few years ago I was one of many cultural Jews in Tucson keeping [...]
Read More »Anti-Semitism in Europe and in the Islamic world is a major problem, but we shouldn’t allow the fixations of enemies to divert us from the reality that we do have friends — and that we owe these friends our support when they fall upon dark times. The great Jewish historian, Salo W. Baron, famously criticized [...]
Read More »In the eyes of the Zionist Organization of America, the most depraved enemies of the Jewish people are obnoxious college campus loudmouths. As the editor of New Voices, a national magazine by and for Jewish college students, I have a different perspective. The ZOA led the campaign to have discrimination against Jewish students recognized as [...]
Read More »(JTA) — Imagine if the NAACP responded with skepticism to the passage of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and urged African Americans to exercise their civil rights cautiously under this law. Title VI was landmark legislation when it was passed in 1964 to remedy racial and ethnic discrimination in programs receiving federal funding. [...]
Read More »I was very fortunate this year to attend the LGBT Seder put on by the Jewish Inclusion Project [sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona] and held at Congregation Or Chadash. I am straight, and I initially attended mainly because of a (lesbian) friend who is new to town and wanted to go to [...]
Read More »Re: “The health care debate: envisioning a future that avoids ‘moral hazards’” (AJP 4/6/12), Nancy Kaufman’s goals are admirable — health care for all, especially those in our society that are the most needy. One key omission, how to pay for the huge cost of “Obamacare”? Jews have been in the forefront of giving throughout [...]
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