Nathan Jeffay
By Nathan Jeffay
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News Israel’s Sex-Segregated Buses Riding High
“Hey, lady!” yelled the bus driver. He was loud but friendly. “You forgot your Psalms booklet.” It was a typical weekday afternoon in Tel Aviv, Israel’s secular metropolis, and the Route 322 bus is picking up its first passengers as it gets going to Ashdod. On this particular 322, the driver, a jolly middle-aged man…
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The Schmooze A Wikipedia for Jews
There’s a new craze among religious students in Israel. As regular folk get in on the act of shaping the world’s knowledge by writing, editing and improving articles on Wikipedia, religious students are busily working on their own Jewish Wikipedia-like project. The Responsa Project, run by Bar Ilan University, is digitizing tens of thousands of…
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The Schmooze University of Haifa Awards Honorary Doctorate to Druze Spiritual Leader
The name Shaykh Mowafak Tarif probably doesn’t mean much to you. But among Israel’s Druze minority, everybody has heard of him — he is the community’s spiritual leader. Today he will receive an honorary doctorate at the University of Haifa. There is much excitement about the award in the Druze community, where it is seen…
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The Schmooze Shuli Rand, Remember Him?
Remember Shuli Rand, the actor who took the lead role in “Ushpizin,” an internationally acclaimed Israeli movie made in 2004? Well that role is pretty much the extent of the actor’s exposure outside Israel since he returned to the ways of his Orthodox upbringing and became ba’al teshuva, or newly religious, in 1996. But in…
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News A Library Welcomes Israel’s Outsiders
On a sunny Sunday afternoon early in May, 5-year-old Danielle Fabicanas looked on with excitement as an amazing transformation took place in Lewinsky Park, an expanse of concrete and grass known in this city as a hangout for drug pushers and addicts. At 5 p.m., as she waited expectantly with her mother, Jerusalem-based artist Hadas…
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The Schmooze Sarcasm Software Is Dead Serious
If there’s one thing that Israelis don’t get, it’s sarcasm. Try being sarcastic, whether in English or in Hebrew, and more often than not it falls flat, sometimes leading to embarrassing misunderstandings. Ironic, then, that Israeli academics have just made a breakthrough that will help the world know when somebody is being sarcastic. Hebrew University…
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The Schmooze Could Elvis Costello Be Coming to Israel After All?
His wife, the Canadian jazz pianist and singer Diana Krall, is to perform in Ra’anana in August, and the international pro-Israel advocacy group StandWithUs has offered Elvis Costello a “five star VIP tour of Israel” if he accompanies her on the trip. The Forward recently reported that Costello canceled his June 30 and July 1…
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News A Roadside Rally For Soldiers Who Refused Orders
Some 400 protesters gathered recently outside a prison dating back to the British Mandate to offer solidarity with inmates who are being hailed by some as modern-era Sharanskys. “Refuseniks claimed the right for Jews to live in a certain place in the world, and these youngsters are defending that right,” Likud party activist Shlomo Amshalem…
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