Article Library

Reparations, Restitution and the Price of Forgetting

There was nothing inevitable about the Holocaust. It is history’s most horrific example of what happens when people and governments are indifferent in the face of evil.

The Haredi Leadership: Crime and its Punishment

The ultra-Orthodox self-segregate from Israeli society, but the Walder affair is revealing major cracks in the 'wall of holiness.' A day of reckoning is coming

High Noon: The Rabbi versus the Colonel

Kahana has a law to promote Israel’s law of conversion. The short recap of what the new law intends to do: eliminate the monopoly of the rabbinate over conversions and let city rabbis perform official conversions.

To Repair the Whole, We Must Understand its Parts

On January 16, Novak Djokovic, the top-seed men’s Tennis player in the world, was deported from Australia after a legal saga that ultimately resulted in the cancelation of his visa on the basis of "health and good order” on the eve of the Australian Open. Although Djokovic is not vaccinated against Covid-19, he has not actively promoted anti-vax disinformation. A…

Walter Mondale: A Pragmatist With a Lesson for Progressives

Mondale movingly evoked the 1938 Evian Conference, where the world refused to liberalize immigration quotas for Jewish refugees, saying the “world will not forget us if we fail” in saving people fleeing South Asia by boat.

AIPAC’s Gamble

A few days ago, the Israel lobby in the United States, AIPAC, announced that it would no longer confine itself to its usual political activity in Washington, but would support specific candidates for elected office, Republicans and Democrats, who support Israel – even in the upcoming primary season. In so doing, AIPAC is changing its policy of avoiding direct involvement…

Local private rabbinic courts undermine the reason they should exist

A private court that forced is on litigants by the ultra-Orthodox community that sponsors it can't properly serve those who would otherwise seek its rulings

Next PA head will do more for Palestinians than Abbas ever did

Without an Israeli peace initiative aimed at dividing the land into two states, we are abandoning Israel’s future to a Palestinian decision.

Political Extremism and the Jews

There is a natural tendency, when discussing political extremism and polarization, to assume that the extreme Right and the extreme Left are mirror images of one another. In so doing, one appears evenhanded, even broadminded, able to accept that one's own side's extremists are as bad as those of the other side.