Troubled greatly these days by the injustices all around us, I sat in synagogue some weeks back and came once again upon the ritual of the Sotah: the bizarre, seemingly barbaric procedure employed in Biblical times to placate a man consumed by suspicion over his wife’s unfaithfulness. Is it curious why he is so jealous?…
In the early days of the Trump administration, I wrote an essay expressing serious reservations about the modest but growing movement by churches and synagogues to offer aid and housing to undocumented immigrants. Since then, America has changed, and so have I. My initial unease was not because of what “sanctuary” tries to do, I…
What is the Nation-State Bill? The Nation-State Bill is a proposed Basic Law that would anchor Israel’s status as the national homeland of the Jewish people. The bill clauses contain, for example, the “Law of Return,” state symbols, Jewish festivals and the Hebrew language. It is Israel’s first attempt to constitutionally anchor its identity in…
I first heard of the Nation-State Bill about eight years ago, when I was a Member of the Knesset. I was stopped in the hallway by a fellow M.K. from my party who asked me to support a bill affirming that Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people. My initial reaction was that this…
What message of Tisha B’Av is relevant for life in a sovereign state like Israel? Does the American recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel make the day of mourning for “the city that is in mourning, laid waste, despised and desolate” an anachronism? Generations of rabbis and scholars have endeavored to understand the…
On July 5, James Alex Fields, Jr. pleaded not guilty to a 30-count federal indictment charging him with perpetrating the Charlottesville massacre. The first 17 counts charge Mr. Fields under section 1 of the federal hate crimes law, the Matthew Shepard and James Boyd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009. The law punishes persons…
On June 7, the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston denied rehearing of a decision from a three-judge panel awarding Congregation Shearith Israel of Manhattan ownership of the crowns adorning the Torah scrolls in the ark of the Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island. The lawyer for the losing side,…
The best that can be said about the proposed State Conversion Bill is that it is destined to be thrown away into the waste bin that Israeli politics has designated for the recommendations of committees appointed mostly to put out political fires. The proposal is not only a slap in the face, disguised with a…
