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 »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 »The latest turn in the New Atheist debates can be summed up like this: Even if you don’t believe in God, religion still has a lot to offer. Public intellectuals such as Alain de Botton and James Gray in Britain, and scientists like E.O. Wilson and Jonathan Haidt in America, all of them atheists, have [...]
Read More »NEW YORK (JTA) — The destruction of Solomon’s Temple by the Babylonians in 586 BCE was the first great national tragedy in Jewish history. During the subsequent exile, four fast days commemorating the calamitous event were added to the Jewish calendar: the 10th day of the Hebrew month of Tevet, when the siege of Jerusalem [...]
Read More »NEW YORK (JTA) — The teacher stands in front of the sparse classroom, its walls bare and paint peeling. “This school looks like a prison,” one of my fellow travelers whispers. Many of the children are huddled in coats; schools in this neighborhood do not have heat, and the unexpected rain and cool air chill [...]
Read More »(JTA) — A well-known D.C. maxim advises that any economic stimulus must be timely, targeted and temporary. So as legislators begin drafting the 2012 Farm Bill, why are some proposing to cut a program that responds in direct relation to need, supports recipients for an average of just nine months, boasts an extremely low payment [...]
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