The tiny population of religious Jews in prison has plenty of company when it comes to keeping kosher behind bars. A number of secular Jews, messianic Jews, Black Hebrew Israelites and, in many cases, people with no Jewish background at all eat a traditional Jewish diet. Jews, according to one estimate, make up just one-sixth…
Eating kosher, even in prison, is a constitutional right — not only for Jews, but also for Christians. On January 11, a three-justice panel of the California 3rd District Court of Appeals issued a ruling that overturned a lower court one that had denied Margarito Jesus Garcia kosher meals from the state’s Department of Corrections…
Malki, in October you would have turned 25, if only… if only you hadn’t stopped in at the Sbarro restaurant in the center of Jerusalem with your best friend, Michal, that hot summer afternoon of August 9, 2001. You were on your way to a camp counselors’ meeting but had some time to spare. At…
It is a favorite barb against the Zionist left that from the comfort of their homes in New York or Cleveland, they presume to tell Israel what to do, how to behave. Never mind that no one (not even the president or the secretary of state, much less dovish Jews) can “tell” Israel what to…
As Gilad Shalit settles back into life in Israel, the country resounds with an uncomfortable question: What happens next time? Israel started paying high prices for its captured soldiers in the 1980s, and since then, the prisoner-swap exchange rate has been subject to hyperinflation. In the Shalit deal it was 1,027 Palestinian prisoners to one…
The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on October 24 that Ilan Grapel, a dual American-Israeli citizen, will soon be released from an Egyptian prison, after four months of detention on what are believed to be trumped-up charges. American and Israeli policymakers, however — and citizens abroad — should be concerned that the…
It was an uncharacteristic moment of uncertainty — and a rare divergence from Israeli policy — when the usually emphatic Republican presidential candidates were asked how they would have handled Hamas’s demands for the release of Master Sgt. Gilad Shalit, the soldier for whom Israel traded 1,027 Palestinian prisoners, including some terrorists. “You can’t negotiate…
You didn’t have to be a great lover of Israel to get choked up at the sight of Gilad Shalit walking unsteadily into the sunlight of freedom October 18, after five years of being locked in a hole somewhere in Gaza. At the same time, you couldn’t miss the anguished second-guessing that dominated public discussion…
100% of profits support our journalism
