Category: Other

*Tu Bishvat and the Tree That Sweetened the Waters*

In last week’s parsha, Parshas Beshalach, we read about the moment in Yetzias Mitzrayim when the pressure reached its height and Krias Yam Suf took place. Bnei Yisrael were trapped,…

The modern history of statehood is often defined by the tension between the sanctity of existing borders and the moral weight of self-determination. Within this geopolitical theater, the Republic of Somaliland and the Republic of Lithuania…

The Jewish Alibi Market in American Politics

In Times of Israel you can’t write from “nowhere.” So I’m writing from the only place that is honest: my own name. The topic is not “the community as One,” but the way Jewish signs are…

One evening last April, an arsonist set fire to the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion, not long after Governor Josh Shapiro and his family finished their seder celebrating the first night of Passover. The seder is one of the most common ways…

After massacre, there is a powerful temptation in every society: to seal itself morally as well as militarily.

Not to hear nuance.
Not to hear critique.
Not to hear complexity.
Not to hear pain outside your own.

That instinct is understandable….

On Friday, January 30, I went to the all-day “Independent Journalism Conference: The Struggle for Truth in the Age of Social Media” held at Beit Ariella, the main Tel Aviv municipal library. I thought I would just stay for a while, but in…

The insistence on presenting Mehdi Karroubi as an “opposition leader” is not analysis—it is historical fraud.

Mehdi Karroubi did not become opposition because he later fell out with Ali Khamenei. He is a founding insider of the Islamic…

I will refrain from making predictions. War, yes/no? However, the methods used have led me to reconsider my stance on the issue.

The phrase “hot and cold” refers to a method rather than a mood swing. In the wake of early-January bloodshed…

There are moments in the Torah that arrive with thunder. Plagues. Pillars of fire. Seas that split. And then there are moments that slip past us almost unnoticed—quiet details that seem small, but that carry within them an entire theology…

In one of the first commandments listed after the Ten Commandments, Hashem stipulates, “you shall not ascend through stairs [ma’alot] upon My altar, so that you will not reveal your nakedness upon it” (Ex. 20:23). This verse is the…