Yedidia Stern is vice president of the Israel Democracy Institute and a professor of law at Bar-Ilan University.
Yedidia Stern
By Yedidia Stern
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Community Israel Is Repeating The Mistakes That Led To The Temple’s Destruction
What message of Tisha B’Av is relevant for life in a sovereign state like Israel? Does the American recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel make the day of mourning for “the city that is in mourning, laid waste, despised and desolate” an anachronism? Generations of rabbis and scholars have endeavored to understand the…
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Community These Four Conflicting Visions Will Determine Israel’s Future
Israel is a success story on many levels — social, economic, scientific, and in terms of protecting its security. Nevertheless, many of its citizens see the country as treading water. What is the source of this dissonance? In Israel’s cultural war, one community’s dream is another community’s nightmare. But if we are capable of pushing…
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Community Who Are The Ultra-Orthodox Jews Of Israel?
Every eighth citizen of Israel is an ultra-Orthodox Jew. The fertility rate of ultra-Orthodox women—which is three times that of their secular counterparts in Israel—has produced a vast community of a million people, whose future still lies ahead of it: fully fifty percent of all ultra-Orthodox were born in the twenty-first century. Rabbi Aharon Yehuda…
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Community How Much Do Diaspora Jews Matter To Israel?
President Reuven Rivlin’s 2015 “Tribes” speech spoke of the existence of a “new Israeli order” that comprises four main tribes: secular, ultra-Orthodox, Arabs, and religious Zionists. That, supposedly, is the Israeli collective: a federation of tribes with a common future, even if they disagree profoundly regarding the appropriate vision for the State of Israel. Yet…
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Opinion Orthodox Ought To Lead The Search for a Solution
Jews often describe themselves as having a responsibility to work toward tikkun olam, the repairing of the social problems and ethical shortcomings of our time. To many Jews this is a familiar concept on both a private and communal level, but it takes on an entirely new meaning with the modern State of Israel. The…
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