I felt so hopeful when the American Jewish Historical Society said they wanted to mount a performance of my new play, “Rubble Rubble.” As a Jewish anti-Zionist playwright in a politically conservative Jewish institutional landscape, I have grown accustomed to feeling unwelcome in Jewish spaces. I am not the only one. Any Jew who opposes…
Earlier this week, The Guardian published leaked Facebook guidelines for moderators charged with deciding whether to take down hateful content from the social media site. Possibly the most controversial revelation is how Facebook determines whether to remove content which denies the Holocaust. According to the documents, moderators should only take down such content in four…
Wallkill Senior High School just censored my lecture about censorship. Several months ago, the school in an upstate New York community known for its prisons and apple orchards invited me to participate in its annual “Author’s Day” event on April 4 and 5. Published writers gab to administrators, librarians and educators over a buffet dinner…
An Israeli art college removed a student’s painting from a year-end exhibit that depicted a naked woman with the face of Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked. The removal of the painting at the Shenkar College of Engineering, Design and Art, a public college in Ramat Gan near Tel Aviv, prompted a department head to resign. Larry…
Sima Vaknin-Gill may be Israel’s last chief military censor. And she makes no secret of welcoming that. After 10 years in a role that stirs frequent annoyance and occasional dread among journalists, Vaknin-Gill wants her office, which dates back to the country’s wartime founding, replaced with a streamlined civilian agency more in sync with contemporary…
Pssst! I’ve got a secret to share. It’s from deep inside the Orthodox Jewish world. Come closer… Okay, here it is: Orthodoxy changes! It’s not much of a secret, actually. At least in these here parts. But it seems to be an unfamiliar concept for Marc Shapiro, a University of Scranton professor and author of…
Is censoring disagreeable speech ever a good idea? A porn star and an aging Jewish icon seem to think so. Both men, Michael Lucas and Abraham Foxman, have recently opined that speech in favor of “BDS” — boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel — is hate speech and should be banned from Jewish, LGBT, and…
The Danish cartoonist who outraged Muslims with a drawing of the Prophet Mohammad seven years ago has said the West cannot let itself be muzzled by fear of offending Islamic sensibilities. Kurt Westergaard, whose lampoon of Mohammad in the Jyllands-Posten paper nearly got him killed by an axe-wielding assassin in 2010, told Austrian magazine News…
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