Israel's draft-evaders need a theological recalibration: A return to Jacob's vision in which God pulls him not away from the world but into it (Vayetzei)
Category: Other
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An escape escalator to heaven or the divine call to earth?
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From Lord’s to the Land of Milk and Honey: A Cricket Tale beyond the Ashes
Between Tests and Traditions: Cricket’s Unlikely Journey into Jewish and Israeli Life As Australia and England renew their rivalry in the 2025–26 Ashes, millions tune in expecting the familiar rhythms of a storied contest. The crack of…
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When Ordinary People Become Israel’s Shield
At the Jewish Federations of North America General Assembly, I’ve interviewed countless leaders and innovators. But every so often, someone sits down across from you whose story hits differently — raw, unfiltered, and deeply human. That was…
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Counting seven clean days: Female-halachic dissonance
One woman wrote to a rabbi in 2021: “It’s terribly frustrating that I feel powerful attraction to my husband specifically in the week of the 7 clean days, with the height of desire occurring on mikveh night, and the following day. After that,…
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Why Dialogue Dies With Extremists
When Reason Meets Radicalization: Why Facts Alone Cannot Change a Hateful Mind This week I spoke with an Israeli man who teaches at an university in the Netherlands. What he told me stayed with me: “Trying to change someone’s mind with facts…
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Thanksgiving in Jerusalem and the future of Jewish identity
Gap-year programs in Israel are reshaping Jewish identity for American teens. This Thanksgiving, Jerusalem showed why that matters
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Born to Political Extremism? Left Out, Right On!
Here’s a brain-scratching question: why do so few Israelis “cross the lines” from Right to Left (or vice versa) when voting in elections? After the calamitous Oct. 7 debacle and mass protests against the government for its confused hostage…
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Peter Beinart: The Last Good Jew
Ernesto “Che” Guevara once wrote, in a moment of revolutionary bravado, “Better to die standing than to live on one’s knees.” Twenty-five centuries earlier, a different kind of revolutionary—Mordechai ha-Yehudi, the first Jew in…
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Mamdani and Jesse Helms — how people can change
At the end of this post, there is a link to a video in which (at 16:08 minutes) Alan Dershowitz relates the following story about Jesse Helms. Dershowitz was very upset when he saw that Jesse Helms (who had opposed civil rights and other goals…
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Beinart at Tel Aviv University
Since 2012, when Peter Beinart wrote The Crisis of Zionism, he has been one of the primary flashpoints for Jews and Israel. The book presciently warned of a growing schism within the Jewish people, one that was particularly but not only…
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