This weekend, the Jewish people came under threat. I don’t mean the people themselves so much as the idea that there is a single unified Jewish people, a concept that thanks to a new poll was revealed to be more of an anachronism than a truism. The idea of Jewish peoplehood has been such an…
This past week, the Trump administration inaugurated one of its signature foreign policy accomplishments: the official relocation of the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. It was a striking moment, with the celebration coinciding with the killing of scores of protestors in Gaza. The embassy move and the withdrawal from the Iran Deal were…
The State of Israel is 70 years old, well past its early growing pains; it is strong, confident and distinctive. North American Jewry is still here — strong, confident and distinctive in its own fashion. But the relationship between the world’s two largest Jewish communities is growing more and more strained, and, on this milestone…
For many months now, progressive American Jews and their Israeli counterparts have been watching as our two countries careen down parallel tracks of illiberal democracy at break-neck speed. The political situations play out like competing versions of the television series Homeland and Hatufim, one in English, the other in Hebrew, but in real life and…
In a recent Forward article about a new study on young American Jewry, Batya Ungar-Sargon explains that Israel’s far-right turn has left young jews increasingly disconnected from modern day Israel, and even the idea of a Jewish State itself. While highlighting some important developments that make clear the urgent need for justice in Israel/Palestine and…
Ever since the late 1960s, Israel has been a defining feature of American Jewish identity. But for the first time in fifty years, this is changing. Wedge issues have been alienating liberal Jews from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hawkish, pro-Orthodox, pro-settlement platform, issues like prayer accommodations for Reform and Conservative Jews at the Western Wall…
As a part of our Rabbi Roundtable series, we brought together leading rabbis from all corners of the Jewish world to offer their thoughts on the big questions. This week, we asked our rabbis, “What are Jews? — a race, a religion, a culture, an ethnicity, a nation….?” Here are their responses: Avram Mlotek, Orthodox,…
President Reuven Rivlin’s 2015 “Tribes” speech spoke of the existence of a “new Israeli order” that comprises four main tribes: secular, ultra-Orthodox, Arabs, and religious Zionists. That, supposedly, is the Israeli collective: a federation of tribes with a common future, even if they disagree profoundly regarding the appropriate vision for the State of Israel. Yet…
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