I was not very excited to go to Washington DC: recent news from the capital was bleak, to say the least, and the idea of spending my time visiting sites felt like treason. In this country ruled a man who called us rapists and who was building a wall to keep us outside. Sure, I…
JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu firmly rejected statements by government ministers and members of the Knesset in the wake of this week’s approval of an egalitarian section at the Western Wall. “I reject the recent disparaging and divisive remarks by ministers and members of Knesset about Reform Jews,” Netanyahu said in a statement…
Russian non-Jews who are preparing to immigrate to Israel have been given the option of beginning their conversion to Judaism in Moscow. This option came with the launch last week in Russia of the Maslul project, which is a joint initiative of several organizations for facilitating the conversion process for prospective immigrants even before they…
Some of the loudest cheering for Sunday’s historic deal to create an egalitarian prayer space at Judaism’s holiest site, the Western Wall, came from 7,000 miles away. Reform and Conservative leaders in America called it the Israeli government’s first serious step to honor religious plurality in Israel, where the ultra Orthodox largely control Jewish expression…
With a budget reaching $300 million, it was conceived as a broad partnership between the Israeli government and leading Diaspora Jewish groups. Its goal: to create a stronger connection between global Jews and Israel. But nearly two years after its launch was announced with much fanfare — and after a string of delays — the…
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has written to the Jewish Agency for Israel indicating his support for a renewed joint initiative between Israel and the Jewish world, JTA has learned, two weeks after the agency withdrew from a similar initiative in protest. In a letter sent earlier this month, Natan Sharansky and Chuck Ratner, the chairman…
The political scientist Alan Wolfe published his latest book about the Jewish diaspora, “At Home in Exile,” in late October, just weeks before Sheldon Adelson uttered his most recent outrageous remarks. Too bad. Adelson’s unfortunate rant would have provided another example to prove Wolfe’s point. Adelson, the zillionaire philanthropist and businessman, is not known for…
In October 1998, in a suburb of Buffalo, N.Y., an obstetrician-gynecologist named Barnett Slepian was assassinated while standing in his kitchen, shot by an anti-abortion sniper hiding in the woods behind the house. It was a Friday night, and Slepian had just returned from synagogue where he was saying Kaddish for his late father. Eight…
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