Guy Adam In the fall of 2010, I had recently arrived in Tel Aviv and had started my New Israel Fund Fellowship at ASSAF, a humanitarian aid organization helping asylum seekers and refugees in Israel. I met Guy around then at the ASSAF offices. He spoke English, so I explained to him that I was…
An alternative Seder plate holds a coconut, representing closeted LGBTQ youth. / JQ International At the time, it didn’t occur to me to be offended or concerned that I was being circled by the cheerleaders and other popular girls who held hands, bowed their heads and prayed for my soul. They were part of “Christian…
This year will witness the reintegration, at long last, of a Jewish vision for social justice in both the Diaspora and in Israel. At the Jewish Social Justice Roundtable, a recent gathering of Jewish social justice organization, Rabbi David Rosenn of the New Israel Fund and I co-led a conversation about how the situation in…
As threats from Iran, violence in the occupied West Bank and instability in Syria and Egypt dominate public discourse these days, Israel’s once-buoyant movement for social democracy that topped them all just two years ago has, silently, all but vanished. During the long summer days of 2011, in the tents of Israel’s protest cities, many…
In less than two decades, Keshet has evolved from a small grassroots group in Boston advocating the inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in Jewish life to a nationwide organization that, today, operates on a $1.7 million budget and has educators in over 200 Jewish communities across the country. Much of this success…
Thousands of demonstrators marched from Tel Aviv’s Habima Square to Kaplan Street to protest against the economic policies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Finance Minister Yair Lapid, marking the two-year anniversary of the protests railing against the high cost of living. The rally dispersed at around 1:00 A.M. One man was arrested by the…
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…
Thousands of Israelis took to the streets on Saturday to protest against austerity measures presented this week as part of the state’s new budget. Rallies were expected to take place in cities across the country, bringing back the social protest that took Israel by storm two years ago. Some 10,000 people were estimated to be…
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