To establish its independence, Israel had to win a war against the combined might of the Arab nations in 1948. The Arab failure to destroy the nascent Jewish state became known, in Orwellian Arab vernacular, as “Nakba,” a catastrophe. For the next 20 years, neither Jordan nor any of the other Arab states even spoke [...]
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Israelis and Jews around the world are awaiting the Palestinians’ push at the United Nations for statehood with trepidation. The official response of the government of Israel and American Jewish groups has been to do everything possible to prevent any action at the U.N. and to line up votes against it. Only America and a [...]
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I was amused by Adam Serwer’s recent blog post titled “Is Bibi anti-Israel?” in which he pointed out that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu conditionally offered this month to negotiate with the Palestinians using the pre-1967 borders as a framework. Amazingly, there was no outcry by American Jews that Netanyahu was abandoning Israel by suggesting [...]
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It’s high time to face an unpleasant fact: President Obama and Israel are not on the same page. This has been true ever since Obama took office in January 2009, but it was most recently apparent this May when the president ambushed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with an adversarial speech the day before Netanyahu’s [...]
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BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (JTA) – Israel and America are at a dangerous crossroads in which the survival of Israel and the safety of the United States both hang in the balance. Year after year, the forces of terrorism become stronger, and the claims of terrorists become more acceptable to our European allies and more powerful [...]
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WASHINGTON (JTA) — A strong secure Jewish state of Israel, supported by the United States as a close ally, has been a central feature of my public and private careers. As a senior government official in several administrations, an American and a Jew, I see Israel from multiple perspectives. Israel plays a strategic role in [...]
Read More »(JTA) — We appreciate Rabbi Shafran’s embrace of the importance of the work of Magen Tzedek when he states in his JTA Op-Ed, “to be sure Jewish ethical values in food production are no less important (than) halachic concerns, and are indeed embodied in independent halachic mandates. But they are distinct from kashrut.” With that [...]
Read More »(JTA) — There is something ironic, to put it politely, about an effort championing ethics that speaks from both sides of its mouth. That would be the new certification seal for kosher food products, created by a Conservative rabbi and actively being promoted by his movement, that aims to “help assure consumers that kosher food [...]
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We are saddened by the contempt that Rabbi Shlomo Amar, the Sephardic chief rabbi of Israel, expresses for Reform and Conservative Judaism at this High Holidays season. The Reform and Conservative movements in Israel are small but vibrant, and growing rapidly. This growth comes despite longstanding Israeli government policy that funnels taxpayers’ money only to [...]
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The media has reported the vehement opposition of the American Conservative and Reform movements and Jewish Federations of North America to the conversion bill proposed by Knesset member David Rotem. I find their opposition puzzling. Within the framework of halachah, or Jewish law, the Rotem bill expands the scope of conversion, prevents application of stringencies [...]
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