The Hazon food conference was my first trip out to California, and boy did I fall in love. After a few days hiking in Big Sur, where sheer cliffs dropped down hundreds of feet to the blue ocean, foam rising rhythmically around small mountains of eroded rock, stretching as far as we could see, I…
Washington — Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert didn’t do anything wrong — but he should have kept his mouth shut. That was the reaction of several Jewish leaders to Olmert’s public boast January 11. He said he left Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice “shamed” by getting President Bush to block her at the last moment…
Tel Aviv — On January 14, Israeli human rights groups issued a detailed report alleging serious human rights violations by Israel’s military in its three-week campaign in Gaza against Hamas. But Israel rejected the allegations and continued to notch up its effort to lay the blame on Hamas for the harm suffered by civilians during…
The movement for publicly funded Hebrew language and culture charter schools took a giant step forward as a new charter school for New York City received final approval and plans emerged for a national center to back Hebrew charter school efforts across the country. On January 13, the New York State Board of Regents approved…
One of the primary leaders in the fight to question and delegitimize the Holocaust has proclaimed that fight to be a lost cause, sparking a furious debate among his cohorts. Mark Weber, a telegenic Californian, has served for 15 years as director of the Institute for Historical Review, which was founded in the late 1970s…
Tel Aviv — In a move that some Israelis are calling a nail in the coffin of Israeli democracy — and others deem an overdue stand against a domestic fifth column — the Knesset has disqualified two Arab political parties from running in next month’s general election. The Knesset Central Election Committee, comprising members of…
Tel Aviv — As Israel’s military campaign in Gaza entered its third week, Israel’s leaders were shifting the stated aim of their offensive to preventing Hamas from rearming by smuggling weapons through a series of tunnels between Gaza and Egypt. However indirectly, this meant Egypt, too, had become a focus of the ongoing offensive. Previously,…
A New York State court decision has called into question the arbitration powers of rabbinical courts, long used by observant Jews to settle civil disputes. In a decision issued December 18, Judge Bruce Balter of the New York State Supreme Court threw out an arbitration ruling by the Beth Din of America, one of the…
Washington — As the new administration’s foreign policy team takes shape, veteran peace negotiator Dennis Ross is emerging as the diplomat who will take on America’s most daunting foreign policy challenge: dealing with a perceived nuclear threat from Iran. Not so incidentally, the issue is also one that Israel sees as a source of existential…
Beit Shemesh, Israel — Spirituality sells. As developers feel the pinch of the global economic slowdown, building projects across Israel lie half-finished. But at the 400-unit Nofei Hashemesh development in Beit Shemesh near Jerusalem, work is steaming ahead. The prices are not cheap, and the houses are nothing special. So what is its secret to…
Early in the third week of the Gaza war, Ehud Olmert’s old self took over. No statesman in his right mind would have said what Olmert said in public January 14 about President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Not to mention a statesman serving as prime minister of a country supported by the…
