Israeli politics tends to be quite different from almost all other democracies. But on the face of it, what’s been going on lately is very strange even by Israel’s “outlier” standards. In a nutshell, the governing coalition is running…
Category: Other
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Lemmings Towards the Next Election
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Jealousy’s Destructiveness
The story of Yosef and his brothers is one of the most tragic stories in Jewish History. It was clearly part of a Divine plan that the Jewish people would go down to Egypt. But the circumstances that caused it, are most troubling. The Mussar…
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The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish, a Review
Rachel Kadish’s The Weight of Ink is a novel whose characters feel as alive as the ideas they wrestle with, as though they relive the Torah first-hand — so alive that they seem to push against the edges of the centuries between them. A USA…
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Hillel, Shamai, somebody’s grandma and the great Jerusalem sufganiyot debate
There was a fight at the grocery store last night. Not the loud kind. The Jewish kind. The kind where no one raises a fist but several people raise competing sources. It began near the sufganiyot, which should have been a clue. The question was…
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Antisemitic Mob Outside My Synagogue – What to Know
Park East Synagogue, an Orthodox congregation on Manhattan’s Upper East Side—a neighborhood long considered welcoming for Jewish families, is a place my family and I consider our second home. As a Jewish advocate and retired public-school…
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Cat-Arbuz: The Poster Boy of the KANAANI Breed
Registered in TICA as an Experimental New Breed (XKA), December 11, 2025 Some animals carry more than appearance. They carry memory — a trace of where their kind began. Arbuz is one of those rare cats. His eyes cannot be confused with the eyes…
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Call me Zayde — Maybe
Two seemingly unrelated bits of family information. (But see below.) First item. I married into a musical family. My wife and her three siblings were all blessed with beautiful voices. They loved to sing, usually in perfectly pitched harmonies,…
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Birthright Israel: How a Generation Finds Identity, Community, and Purpose
In a world where antisemitism is rising and Jewish identity is under threat, programs that deepen connection to heritage have never been more critical. Last night, Miami’s Rubell Museum hosted a 25th-anniversary celebration of Birthright…
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Refusing Comfort, Keeping Hope (Vayeshev)
The deception has taken place. Joseph has been sold into slavery. His brothers dip his coat in blood. They bring it back to their father, saying: “We found this. Try to identify it. Is it your son’s robe or not?” Jacob recognises it and…
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When Hassan II Declared Arabs Were the Gravediggers of Their Cause [2/3]
This is the second chapter in a three-part series on King Hassan II’s views on Israel. To read the first chapter, click here. 1967: The king predicts disaster – and blames Nasser The Six-Day War occupies one of the most dramatic chapters in…
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