Israel News

Hebrew, the Sexy Language

Sexy people speak their own language — and it’s Hebrew, according to America’s top movie. In “Date Night,” a film filled with celebrity appearances, Hebrew makes a cameo. The romantic comedy opened atop the America’s box office during the weekend ending April 11. Starring Tina Fey and Steve Carell, the movie follows a night in…

A Webzine Worth Mentschen

It used to be that women, to paraphrase Virginia Woolf, needed to have a room of their own, to carve space out of a male-dominated world in which to find and share their own voices. Today, it seems, men need a room, as well. So the Conservative movement’s Federation of Jewish Men’s Clubs has started…

The Kibbutz at 100

The kibbutz, one of the grand social and economic experiments of the past century, was once a symbol of a liberal, humanistic Israel. Today, the kibbutzim, in their 100th year, have been profoundly transformed, and the face of Israel is a different kind of settlement — the West Bank settlement that seeks to build “facts…

Dancer, Advocate and Pioneer Win Prestigious Israel Prize for Lifetime Work

A legendary dancer and choreographer, a Druze advocate for Israel and a veteran socialist-Zionist pioneer will be honored on Independence Day as winners of the coveted Israel Prize for lifetime achievement. Altogether there will be 16 recipients this year, spanning literature, the sciences and the arts. But most of the attention goes to those who…

Past and Present: Israel’s Impact on the Developing World

In 1958, Israel was a fledgling state barely able to provide for its own. It was beset on all sides by enemies threatening imminent attack and trying to cope with the absorption of hundreds of thousands of refugees. Nonetheless, that year it launched an ambitious initiative aimed at sharing its nation-building know-how with newly nascent…

Tips for a Day That Is Hard To Say

And the Funniest Religion Is…

Judaism’s the oldest, Christianity’s the biggest and Islam, apparently, is the funniest. A pair of Muslim jokesters claimed two of the top three spots in “Which Religion Is Funniest?” a comedy competition that concluded on April 2 in England. With videotaped submissions from some 70 performers, the contest crowned two winners, including Nabil Abdulrashid, a…

Israel’s Competing Gay Tours

Tel Aviv has become the destination du jour for gay and lesbian travelers. So hot has the White City become that, as The New York Observer reported on March 26, rival gay tour promoters are fighting it out with competing spring trips. In one corner: Michael Lucas, the world’s leading Zionist gay pornographer, whose groundbreaking…