Has Israel just eased the housing crisis — or issued an invitation for wanton wastage of natural resources? From the start of 2014 on Wednesday, municipal taxes on second homes will double. Or to be accurate, taxes on all homes that are occupied for less than nine months a year will be double taxed. This…
Two years after the Tel Aviv social protest movement was born out of anger at high property prices, Israelis have been told that they’ve misunderstood the problem all along. It is, the new Housing Minister insists, that there’s too little settlement activity. “The key to immediately stopping the rise in home prices is massive building…
I am a Jewish tenant organizer. This is not so unusual. Jews have been organizing ourselves and others since we left the Old World for New York City’s slums. We created labor unions when we lived in tenements on the Lower East Side, and we continue to organize today, often in partnership with other communities,…
The umbrella body for Jewish public policy groups joined other religious organizations in asking Congress to provide $1 billion to the National Housing Trust Fund. The Jewish Council for Public Affairs, Catholic Charities (USA) and the National Council of Churches are working together to elevate poverty in the national dialogue, according to a press release…
At the start of the summer, Israel’s social protest movement looked like it would represent a real turning point for women in the public sphere. The face of the movement was indisputably female. The story began when a young filmmaker, 25-year-old Daphne Leef, pitched a tent in downtown Tel Aviv to protest the lack of…
“The People demand social justice.” That’s the slogan, the chant of more than 300,000 people in dozens of sites across Israel. And just maybe, the State of Israel is now entering the third chapter of its history as independent. During the first chapter, which extends from Israel’s founding in 1948, to 1977, 29 years of…
Faced with thousands of young Israelis taking to the streets, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has unveiled a new proposal to solve Israel’s housing crisis and, he hopes, stem a grassroots protest movement whose popularity has shaken his government. In a speech from his office July 26, Netanyahu announced that for the first time in Israeli…
How a Jewish co-housing community created by the Reform movement transformed the lives of California college students
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