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…
This is one of those times when the gulf between we American Jews and our Israeli kin seems wider than the ocean. As sirens blare and rockets whoosh through the sky there, we here can only empathize, support and, for those so inclined, pray. We can hope for a speedy end to the attacks and…
Diaspora Jews feel that Israel must reflect all Jewish values, The Jewish People Policy Institute told Israel’s Cabinet in its 10th annual Assessment of the Situation & Dynamics of the Jewish People. The report was presented to the Cabinet Sunday by JPPI president Avinoam Bar-Yosef alongside co-chairs and former U.S. ambassadors Dennis Ross and Stuart…
Substantial majorities of Israeli Jews believe they share a fate with Diaspora Jews and that the Israeli government should take into account how its decisions affect the Diaspora. The poll, released Wednesday and commissioned by the Jewish Media Summit underway in Jerusalem, found that 62 percent of respondents “believe that Jews in Israel and the…
Just a few hundred yards separate the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office and cabinet room from the Jerusalem headquarters of the Jewish People Policy Institute, the clumsily-named think tank set up in 2002 by the quasi-governmental Jewish Agency for Israel. Judging by a pair of recent blue-ribbon reports from the two offices on Israel’s relationship with…
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