This is the Forward’s coverage of Taglit-Birthright Israel, a free 10-day trip to Israel for young adults with Jewish heritage.
Birthright
The Latest
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The Schmooze ‘Napoleon Dynamite’ Makes Fun of Birthright
Apparently there’s been a “Napoleon Dynamite” animated TV show on Fox for a month now, and I had no idea. Well, my ignorance is justified. Writing shortly after the first episode aired on January 15, The New Yorker movies editor Richard Brody argued that “the results are just a pastiche; the cartoons take the characters…
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Life Political Dissonance Among Russian Jews
My boyfriend and I are standing on the downtown B express, hand in hand, laughing over the idle chatter of passengers and metal shrieks of the train car as it scrapes over the tracks beneath it. We are two young Russian-speaking Americans — that much I can say with certainty. To say that we are…
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Israel News Business Students Get View of Protests
As the largest social protest in Israeli history engulfed the streets of Tel Aviv last summer, a small group of American Jewish students witnessed the commotion from a unique vantage point: the Israeli business world that was one of the protest’s broadly defined targets. Twenty students spent the summer in Tel Aviv as part of…
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Food Hosting a Sustainable Shabbat Dinner
One day out of seven, we have the opportunity to stop creating and start being. To enjoy the world around us, including friends and family, beautiful places, enjoyable activities. To rest and recharge. If sustainability is about meeting the needs of today without compromising the needs of future generations, Shabbat is a great place to…
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The Schmooze Why Branding Judaism Is a Bad Idea
I blame Heeb. Launched in 2001, “The New Jew Review” iterated a sharp, satirical take on Jewish culture. The idea was to edify through mockery: Thus a 2005 cover featured Sarah Silverman displaying her cleavage through a hole in a sheet. Although it can try too hard to shock (remember Roseanne Barr as Hitler baking…
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Food Balancing Food Traditions at Your Tu B’Shvat Seder
Tonight, Jan 19th, there’ll be a full moon in the sky: the full moon of the Hebrew month Shvat. The indigenous Israelites from whom we descend celebrated this as the start of the year for the natural world. Like lots of elements of Jewish tradition, we never forgot it, even as its meaning has changed…
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Books Notes From the Tour Bus
How can young people’s first experiences of Israel be at once profound and revelatory, yet predictable and banal? This conundrum was well in place before 2000, when Taglit-Birthright Israel began offering free 10-day trips to Israel to qualifying diasporists aged 18 to 26. But the Birthright machine mass-produces the phenomenon — and now showcases it…
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Life A Peace Process… for Birthright and MASA
Peace might be just around the corner. Peace in the Jewish communal world, that is. According to Natan Sharansky, chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel, while world leaders are talking about promoting the peace process, he is in fact engaged in such a process. The peace Sharansky was speaking about, during a brunch reception…
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Opinion The moral degradation of Israel’s far right is even worse than you think
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Culture Gene Shalit, a mensch with a personality as big as his mustache, turns 100
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Looking Forward How a song about the food chain became a Seder mainstay
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Fast Forward Connecticut Catholic school punishes students who targeted ‘Jew Canaan’ rivals on social media
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