Elhanan Miller is an independent journalist based in Jerusalem and a rabbinical student at Beit Midrash Harel
Elhanan Miller
By Elhanan Miller
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Community An Outspoken Orthodox Rabbi Is Breaking The Rabbinate’s Monopoly On Marriage
A version of this article originally appeared in Plus61J, an Australian-Jewish publication. Israelis love complaining about the overbearing power of the Orthodox Chief Rabbinate. Few, however, have done more to challenge the Rabbinate’s monopoly over Jewish life choices than Rabbi Aaron Leibowitz of Jerusalem. After completing his struggle to introduce alternative kosher certificates to restaurants…
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Community The Peace Process Isn’t Bringing Jews And Arabs Together — But Running Is.
A version of this article originally appeared in Plus61J, an Australian-Jewish publication. The Israeli-Palestinian peace process may be going nowhere, but in Jerusalem, a grassroots initiative connecting Jews and Arabs through physical activity is giving residents hope for a better future in a divided city. Some 1,000 teenagers and adults gathered on November 9 at…
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Community Can Syrians Find Political Asylum In Israel?
A version of this article originally appeared in Plus61J, an Australian-Jewish publication. The first text message arrived on July 2, and it was frantic. “I expect our area to be handed over to the criminal [Assad regime] in a very humiliating agreement,” my contact wrote. “I am one of those people who will not be…
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Community Ultra-Orthodox Legislators Are Weaponizing Torah Study
A version of this story first appeared in +61J, an Australian Jewish publication. How ironic would it be if Netanyahu’s government came to an end not due to his investigations, but as a result of the messy politics of religion and state? This week, representatives of the ultra-Orthodox sector in Knesset staged a coalition crisis…
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Community Israel’s Most Controversial Journalist Isn’t Finished Fighting The Occupation
A version of this piece originally appeared in Plus61J, an Australian Jewish publication. It’s hard to imagine a more controversial Israeli journalist than Gideon Levy. The Tel Aviv native began his career in journalism as a soldier in 1971, reporting for Army Radio on Israeli politics. In 1978, at the age of 26, he joined…
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Israel News My Son’s Killer Is on Trial and No One Informed Me
The video is infamous: In March an Israeli sergeant shot and killed a Palestinian who had already been lying for several minutes in the street, wounded and neutralized, after being shot while stabbing and wounding another soldier. Now, Abdul Fattah Sharif’s death is in its long second phase — the sergeant’s military trial. And though…
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Life Can These Newly Ordained Rabbis Upend the Status Quo in Israel?
Bitya Rozen-Goldberg had no idea she wanted to be a rabbi when she immigrated to Israel from France 11 years ago. In the years since settling in Jerusalem, the 33-year-old tour guide studied Talmud in numerous female settings. But as “female rabbi” has long been an oxymoron in the Orthodox world, she never thought she…
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Israel News A Muted Jerusalem Day Parade, With Some Help from a Court Order
JERUSALEM—As the alleyways of Jerusalem’s Muslim Quarter began to empty on Sunday afternoon, a policeman in grey fatigues approached Ahmad Arafa and asked him to shutter his shoe shop. “Can I smoke a cigarette first?” The 23-year-old vendor asked the officer. “If you want them to turn over your stall, be my guest,” the policeman…
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