Category: Other

In some places it comes early, in others late. Some mark it on the twenty-fifth of December, some wait until January, and some observe it quietly, without date or decoration, as one observes a memory. This is a region that does not agree…

Rivka Sassover Peled  told me about what happened to her mother in Trieste when the Nazis invaded Italy. Her mother, Hemda Sassover, was a young Jewish woman living on her own, so her best friend Angelica offered her refuge with her family….

National trauma announces itself in public spaces: sirens, headlines, funerals, protests, and speeches. But its deepest work happens elsewhere.

It happens behind closed doors.

After October 7th, Israel’s public square carried the visible…

I get to call Jerusalem home. I have called it home for as long as I have lived in Israel. My neighbourhood in Jerusalem is the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. The Old City is sort of the Rick’s Café  Américain  in the film…

I recently participated in the impressive event commemorating Jewish peoplehood and the legacy of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, one of the prominent leaders of American liberal Judaism in the 20th century, which is organized annually by…

The extinguishing of Hanukkah candles in a Tel Aviv shopping center last week was quickly framed as a scandal, and just as quickly transformed into a symbol. A young Arab-Israeli woman filmed herself putting out the candles of a public…

For decades, the conversation around peace in the Middle East has largely been dominated by discussions of power, borders, and security. While these aspects are crucial, they haven’t proven to be enough on their own. The Abrahamic movement…

On Sunday night, I attended a vigil organised by the Jewish Council of Australia at Grattan Street Gardens in Prahran, Melbourne. I did not attend as a participant. I attended as a silent protest.

I went because the Jewish Council is an…

It may have been an evening of comedy that had the audience rolling, but the hysterically funny material actually educated several thousand people in one swoop about Gemara, Israel, Zionism, Hebrew, issues of antisemitism, Jewish hIstory and…