In 1912 and 1914, The Washington Post described the Confederate monument at Arlington National Cemetery as “a magnificent work of art” and “one of the most beautiful [monuments] in this section of the country.” Commissioned by the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) and celebrated with a cornerstone-laying ceremony and a formal dedication two years…
Last week, Haaretz ran an explosive story. “Orthodox trip operators are taking over Birthright Israel Programs” proclaimed the headline. The article examined Birthright’s recent decision to drop the Reform Movement “as a certified trip provider,” attributing this “split” between Birthright and the Reform movement to the “aggressive” and often misleading “marketing” of Orthodox trip providers…
For at least two decades, generations of participants in Conservative Judaism’s youth movement have played a game in which they compete for points by hooking up with each other. The game, called the “points system,” has been a widespread part of the culture of United Synagogue Youth since the 1990s, according to multiple alumni who…
Fighting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement has become a primary focus of US Israel advocacy. As BDS resolutions come to a vote on campuses across the country, the issue dominates how we talk about Israel. This is to our detriment. The single-minded focus on BDS in fact only makes it harder to fight, and…
Maybe the most salient characteristic of our culture is how much of it is bad. Technological changes have allowed an unprecedented number of hacks to produce great quantities of what the parlance of the day terms “content.” At the same time, the presumed existence of a consumer with a bottomless appetite for diversion has encouraged…
The dozen or so Israelis sitting around a conference table at a Jewish community center in Tenafly, New Jersey, on a recent Wednesday night didn’t look like the leading edge of a new Israeli government-linked crowdsourced online propaganda campaign. Tapping on laptops, the group of high school students and adult mentors completed social media “missions”…
Tuesday in New York City told a tale of two anti-Semitism panels. The first was a buttoned-up afternoon symposium in a minimalist midtown law office entitled “Anti-Zionism=Anti-Semitism.” The second, “The Uses and Abuses of Anti-Semitism,” was a jolly evening affair at the New School where, as you might expect, students predominated. These two mirror image…
When a Holocaust survivor took the microphone last summer at a city council meeting in Mahwah, New Jersey, tensions were already running high. Hundreds of people filled the hall as Sami Steigmann, 78, sat before the township’s mayor and council. The meeting happened amid rising concerns by residents that ultra-Orthodox Jews were “infiltrating” their town…
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