TEL AVIV — It was, simply judging by the history books, a milestone. For the first time in Israel’s history, the Knesset on Monday refused to give its pro forma vote of approval to the prime minister’s annual “state of the nation” speech, by which he marks the opening of the winter term of the Israeli parliament. Abandoned by membersRead More

Mel Gibson and the Demise Of Enlightened Skepticism

By Bernard Avishai

Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” was out on video last week, and I still haven’t seen it. I probably never will, and judging by the surge in its worldwide box office receipts, I may prove to be the only such soul on God’s good earth. This is not a boycott. It’s just that as a 10-year-old boy in Montreal — a pupil atRead More

At Christian Rally for Israel, Robertson Pitches ‘Messiah’

By Judy Lash Balint

JERUSALEM — With 4,000 Christian guests from 70 countries set to participate, the city’s annual Sukkot march was billed as the centerpiece of a weeklong show of evangelical support for Israel. But then televangelist and former GOP presidential candidate Pat Robertson opened his mouth and uncorked a can of theological worms guaranteed to makeRead More

CAMPAIGN CONFIDENTIAL

By E.J. Kessler

CLEVELAND — Ohio is often described as an electoral battleground where domestic policies are key. Quite suddenly, though, Israel and the Middle East have become hot topics here in the Buckeye State.Senator John Edwards and Vice President Richard Cheney took time during their debate here Tuesday to spar over Iraq and to cast theirRead More

Roman Holiday

By Nathaniel Popper

Close to 1 million people in American Jewish families live in low-income households, according to a new study that appears to be the most extensive national communal study ever done about economic vulnerability among American Jews.The study released last month, which used data gathered during the 2001 National Jewish Population Study, lookedRead More

Thank You, Shawn Green

By Peter Dreier

My 7-year old daughter Sarah’s soccer team, which I co-coach, plays every Saturday during the fall. At the team’s Tuesday night practice two weeks ago, I told the players that Sarah — who is the only Jew on her team — and I wouldn’t be at the game the following Saturday because we’d be going to synagogue for Yom Kippur servicesRead More

Kafka on the Dance Floor

By Joseph Carman

Paul Lazar and his wife, Annie-B Parson, never questioned whether the spoken text of live theater and the pure kinetics of dance could create a perfect marriage. Lazar, the actor, and Parson, the dancer and choreographer, formed Big Dance Theater in 1991 to mine and to combine the elements of both art forms into a unique formula. TheRead More

School Daze: Josie Leaves the Nest

By Marjorie Ingall

It has been a tumultuous couple of months in the Ingall-Steuer household. Zayde died. Josie’s beloved baby sitter was badly injured in an accident, breaking her femur and pelvis. Our new baby’s birth is so imminent, the milk in our fridge will expire after my due date. My husband is still trying to start a new business. (Translation: we’reRead More

Biblical Brains

By Aryeh Lev Stollman

And the serpent was more cunning than all the creatures of the field that the Lord God created. And he said to the woman, “Did God say: You shall not eat of any tree in the garden?’”— Genesis 3:1

And the Lord opened the mouth of the ass and she said to Balaam, “What have I done to you that you have beaten me these threeRead More

Warts, Not War: Israeli Films Shift the Focus Away From the Mideast Conflict

By Saul Austerlitz

When it comes to directorial style, the winds continually shift between a more-is-more outlook — where camera and mise-en-scène run wild in an effort to draw attention to the means of production –– and a philosophy of austerity strongly opposed to showy or unnecessary camera movement. The latter has gained adherents recently, with theRead More

Arts & Culture

By Ofer Shelah