Catch the Jew! By Tuvia Tenenbom Gefen Publishing House, 484 pages, $24.95 Liberal Jews chagrined at the recent elections in Israel probably should read Tuvia Tenenbom’s “Catch the Jew.” Tenenbom’s book, in which he narrates his travels and conversations in Israel and the West Bank, will not provide comfort. In fact, he holds leftist Jews…
I’m in Tel Aviv. I love Tel Aviv. Who doesn’t? I’m in a boutique hotel on Gordon Street, facing the Gordon Beach, and I’m ready for breakfast. “What would you like to order?” asks the waiter. I like the waiters at this hotel. They are young and handsome, they look intellectual, and all of them…
Oldenburg, Germany, is made of people who are historically ahead of their time. “In 1932,” a man tells me as I arrive there, “the people here were the first to vote for a local Nazi government. We did it before Berlin!” This man, I learn quickly, is not the only one in Oldenburg who remembers…
In summer of 2011, Daphni Leef’s apartment lease expired but she failed to find a new, affordable rental. Forced to leave her abode, Daphni pitched a tent on the luxurious Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv, igniting a social protest that eventually saw hundreds of thousands of Israelis taking over streets all over the land, pitching…
Like every member of the female species, I read Tuvia Tenenbaum’s interview with Racheli Ibenboim, an up-and-coming female Hasidic politician, with great excitement. This is the interview in which Ms. Ibenboim answers deeply personal questions, thereby revealing everything Tuvia ever wanted to know about Hasidic sex. When I read his highly apologetic, I’d-be-equally-voyeuristic-when-interviewing-a-man response to…
Racheli Ibenboim chats with writer Tuvia Tenenbom./Photo by Isi Tenenbaum For those who haven’t read much of the work of Tuvia Tenenbom, his most recent column has understandably raised some eyebrows and not a few tempers. Asking a Haredi politician, or any public figure, about her personal life (and her wedding night) would seem to…
There are two Meccas, one in Saudi Arabia and the other, you’ll never guess, in Israel. The one in Saudi Arabia is for Muslim pilgrims, the one in Israel is for journalists. There are more journalists in this little part of the world than cats. And, believe you me, there is no place on the…
I don’t know if this has ever happened to you, but late last night, in the frightening darkness of my room in the holy city of Jerusalem, I felt I had had enough of being Jewish. How much, and how long, can a man be a light unto the nations? And so, in the morning…
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