For the past six months Blognik Beat has been dedicated to exploring the past, present, and future of Russian-Jewry. Its bloggers have reached back into time to re-tell the story of their ancestors, of their hardships in the Soviet Republic and their struggles in acclimating to a new world. But this blog has not strictly…
I’ve been following the Alan Gross saga for the past two years now and have often felt alone. The story of the seemingly hapless technology expert who found himself jailed in Cuba for trying to help the miniscule Jewish community connect to the internet has never gotten much pickup among American Jews and has elicited…
With Egypt’s first democratic elections ending in a landslide win for the Muslim Brotherhood, the United States has decided to open formal discussions with the Islamist group. Israel has also relaxed its years-long resistance to engaging with the political movement. American Jewish organizations, however, remain reluctant to reach out to the Brotherhood because of its…
‘Distancing” is the current favored word to describe the reaction of many American Jews, especially young Jews, to the ongoing situation in Israel. (Curiously, Peter Beinart’s essay in the New York Review of Books in May 2010, which catalyzed much of the conversation, nowhere uses the word.) But “distancing” is inadequate to describe the range…
Usually when another blogger sufficiently channels my own anger about something that has me piqued, I tend to just try and let it go and give them the last word. And that was my first reaction this morning when I read, with increasing agitation, Jeffrey Goldberg’s post about a new Israeli ad campaign targeted at…
As Jewish traditions go, conducting a decennial National Jewish Population Study under the auspices of the federation movement has a very short history, and it was broken when the Jewish Federations of North America decided not to support a 2010 study. For researchers, the absence of support for a study reflects the weakened state of…
As tempers flare anew in the never-ending debate over American Jews’ loyalty to Israel, I’m happy to report that an important new voice has weighed in, offering a genuinely fresh approach to the question. And not just any voice. I’m talking about one of Israel’s leading authorities on loyalty, Knesset member Avi Dichter, former head…
Okay, I will come clean. In Daniel Gordis’s latest column for the Jerusalem Post, he writes about meeting “one of America’s leading Jewish journalists” whom he describes as “extraordinarily smart” and who cares a lot about Israel. Imagine my surprise to read about myself. Not that I mind his characterization (thank you, Daniel!), but I…
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