Opinion

When We Include Rabbis With Disabilities, Everyone Wins

Eytan Yammer, William Tepper, Carnie Shalom Rose We expect a lot of our rabbis and most of them do their best to deliver. They head our congregations and often become public faces of the community. They are dedicated to the physical and spiritual wellbeing of their members and can be exemplars of service. But some…

The Dilemma

Benjamin Netanyahu’s surprising and decisive victory in the Israeli elections has created a wrenching dilemma for many American Jews: How to continue to love Israel while a government that violates many of our community’s values is in place? This is likely not an issue for those who unequivocally support Netanyahu’s aggressive, nationalistic stance and cheer…

Is Bibi Our Moses or Pharaoh? Neither.

Illustration by Lior Zaltzman In his speech to Congress a few weeks ago, Bibi concluded with a quote from none other than Moses, the great leader of the Jews and hero of Passover. Indeed, many of his supporters might see him as a modern-day Moses, boldly rebuking the arrogant Pharaoh (whether Obama or the Ayatollah)…

Watch: Obama on Bibi, Palestinians, Reevaluation

President Obama used his March 24 press conference with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani as an opportunity for a lengthy discussion of his plans to reevaluate America’s approach to Israeli-Palestinian relations. It runs 10 minutes, from 34:10 to 44:54. He starts off by inviting a question from Associated Press White House reporter Josh Lederman. Below the…

Ari Lesser’s “Ten Plagues”

Revealing Israel’s Nuclear Secrets

In early February, the Pentagon declassified a 386-page report from 1987, exposing for the first time ever the actual depth of top-secret military cooperation between the United States and Israel — including, amazingly, information about Israel’s unacknowledged nuclear program. In view of the caustic tension that has increased lately between Washington and Jerusalem, the timing…

A Seder Shouldn’t be Flat as Matzo — Try This at Home

There’s no excuse for a boring seder. The Passover story is too dramatic, its themes too urgent, and the energy of guests too opportune for the ritual to be about simply “getting through” the haggadah to make it to the matzoh ball soup. And yet so many Jews confess to streamlining the first stretch of…

At Jew-Centric J Street, Arabs Ask the Best Questions

Courtesy of J Street For the Jews who attended this year’s J Street Conference, the event was an expression of community, idealism and ideology. In a way, it was about how Israel was all about us, the Jews. It was about our values and our identity, which have been so inextricably intertwined with the state…