As the physical signs of the war disappear, so too have the gatherings that showed us how to maintain hope and how to be our best selves
Category: Other
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How goodly were these tents
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Hitler Marriages and Happy Places
If you live in Israel right now, you are probably watching Happy Place (Makom Sameach). It follows Vered (played by Noa Koler), a speech therapist in the throes of a midlife crisis, who is trying to “save” her depressed, aging mother, Nomi…
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Freedom, Mastery, and Joseph: Whom Do You Serve?
Thomas Mann’s magnificent retelling of the Joseph saga captures something the Torah hints at but never states explicitly. In one unforgettable scene, Mann imagines Joseph asking the Ishmaelite slave trader a question that seems, at first,…
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Compromise as Inevitably Patronizing?
Inspired by another visit to Dubai. Another Saturday morning at synagogue in Abu Dhabi and early evening at the Sheikh Zayed Mosque – this time with an Israeli, Jewish child. Impressions. Observations. And a young American adult with multiple…
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The Future of Jewish Peoplehood: Without Its Future
An event about the future of Jewish peoplehood should be full of its future. This one wasn’t. A concern that has been sitting quietly in the back of my mind about Jewish communal continuity came into sharper focus at the Z3 conference in San…
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The Silence on Arab Colonialism
The Other Colonial History We Ignore: Arab Conquest, Silent Slavery, and the Missing Narrative on Indigeneity In schools, documentaries, activism, and social movements, most discussions of colonialism focus on European empires—their expansion,…
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The MOOPs take the Shomron
Embed from Getty Images On December 7, a date which Frank Roosevelt said would live in infamy, 50 MOOP members set out for an excursion to the Shomron. Remarkably, all of them, as well as the Shomron, survived intact, and without international…
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Israel, Kurdistan: Act Before the Map Sets
Turkey digs in with jihadists as Israel hesitates in the north For years, Israel has treated Turkey and the Kurds as background to its concerns in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran. That view is now out of date. Turkey has entrenched itself in northern…
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About Meir Kahane, Kahanism, Ben Gvir and Bibi-ism
A few weeks ago, I had dinner in the NYC area with a rabbi and a young rabbinic intern. We were talking about contemporary Israel and how it is run now by Kahanists (followers of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane) and the young rabbi-in-training asked…
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