Jonathan S. Tobin In the past few weeks, Secretary of State John Kerry has come under attack from prominent Israelis as well as American friends of the Jewish state for some of the methods he has adopted in his determination to find a solution to the Middle East conflict. Such criticism strikes… Read more »
Rabbi Sharon Brous John Kerry is not a naive man. I met him recently at a luncheon at Georgetown University with a small group of Christian, Muslim and Jewish faith leaders brought together to hear the secretary of state’s frank reflections on the peace process. While deeply aware of the complexities and… Read more »
John Kerry is not the first U.S. secretary of state trying to broker peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Nor the first to be rewarded with angry Israeli response for his efforts. James Baker, for one, is still perceived today as one of the secretaries most hostile to Israel. Kerry,… Read more »
NEW YORK (JTA) — The hostile intentions of the international boycott, divestment and sanctions movement toward Israel are clear. But some believe it is possible to be pro-Israel while supporting just a little BDS — boycotting Israeli businesses located on the West Bank but not those within pre-1967 Israel.… Read more »
NEW YORK (JTA) — On her way out the door to defend the SodaStream company, the suddenly political Scarlett Johannson threw a grenade at her erstwhile cause, the international aid organization Oxfam. According to her spokesperson, “she and Oxfam have a fundamental difference of opinion in regards to the… Read more »
NEW YORK (JTA) — All in favor of a strong Jewish future say “aye.” On that core question, there is resounding unanimity, but there have been some unnecessarily polarizing articles in the Jewish press suggesting that we have to select either endogamy or outreach. Nonsense! Such binary thinking reduces… Read more »
The good news is in: Rabbi Avi Weiss’ conversions will be accepted in Israel. I am glad to see that the religious integrity and leadership of Rabbi Weiss has been acknowledged. Undoubtedly, this course correction on the part of the Israeli Chief Rabbinate is due in part to the… Read more »
The Modern Language Association, which held its annual conference here Jan. 9-12, has approximately 28,000 humanities scholars in its membership, about 4,000 of whom attend the annual conference. The conference features hundreds of workshops and panel discussions — about 800 in total this year — on topics ranging from… Read more »
Ariel Sharon’s development as a leader was very similar to that of Menachem Begin. In the final years of their political careers, both men came to realize the limits of relying on force alone. These realizations led to historic decisions: While Begin gave up the Sinai Peninsula — an… Read more »
Adi Meyerson It was 11 o’clock on a chilly September night and I was coming home from a gig — my first in New York City. I had just moved to Manhattan from Jerusalem a couple of months before to become a professional jazz bass player and would take any job… Read more »
I am the chairman of the Jewish community of Turku, Finland. We received a donation of four books by an author who was a Jewish resident of Tucson. The books were donated to our community library in memory of the late Richard Parrish. The donation was made by his… Read more »
The Lappin Foundation is planning a study of our Youth to Israel Adventure’s impact on Jewish identity. To help us contact at least 75 percent of Y2I alumni from 1971 to 2007, please send names and email addresses to [email protected] or 978-740-4410. Y2I was also known as LGI. We… Read more »
Israeli soldiers try to evacuate Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005. (Yossi Zamir/Flash90)
NEW YORK (JTA) — When I first heard about Ariel Sharon’s stroke — the first one, a minor brain attack about four weeks before he suffered the massive hemorrhage that would leave him comatose for the final eight years of his life — I was having dinner at a… Read more »
In January 1985, as a colonel in the Israeli Air Force, I was running a course for high-ranking officers of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), focused on lessons from Israel’s wars. One of the case studies to be discussed was the battle of Um-Katef/Abu-Ageila, in the Six-Day War, when… Read more »
Edgar Bronfman, philthropist and Jewish communal leader, dies at 84. In the coming days, many eulogies will attempt to capture the magnitude of the loss suffered this week by the Jewish community. Really, though, all you need are eight words: Edgar Bronfman was a prince of his people. There are other machers who devote much of their time and… Read more »
LOS ANGELES (JTA) — This past May, I made a YouTube video with the Israeli NGO Rabbis for Human Rights that drew a parallel between my role as Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof,” in which the Jews in Sholem Aleichem’s tale faced expulsion from the Russian shtetl of… Read more »
Last weekend, like other fellow Jerusalemites, I was confined to my home, besieged by the horrendous snowstorm that plagued our city. When power was cut off in our Beit HaKerem neighborhood for two agonizing days, I proudly lit my wood-burning stove. For years, I have been a victim of… Read more »
(JTA) — It started as barely a blip on the radar. At its annual conference last April, the Association for Asian American Studies, or AAAS, unanimously approved a resolution calling for an academic boycott of Israeli universities to protest the country’s treatment of Palestinians. While the BDS (boycott, divestment… Read more »
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Every decade or so, yet another demographic survey reveals the obvious: The American-Jewish community is in flux, with affiliation falling. Each time, the community circles back to what we know works: high-quality Jewish education, along with Jewish camps and Israel programs. Taken together, these are effective… Read more »
Steven B. Nasatir CHICAGO (JTA) — In response to the recent pledge by Jewish Federations of North America Chairman Michael Siegal to raise $1 billion to support tuition-free Jewish preschool, some have dismissed the idea as just another pie-in-the-sky fix to the continuity problem. I disagree. First, attending preschools (as well as… Read more »
