This animosity has its roots in a dangerous lack of understanding of Islam and how it differs from Christianity’s view of the individual and the community. In recent years, we have watched as European governments have sought to restrict or completely prohibit practices perceived as contradicting national or liberal democratic values. The recent hubbub about the burkini is just another…

Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, known collectively as the yamim nora’im are an opportunity for Jews around the world to unite in some serious soul-searching. In recent years, the world’s two largest Jewish communities, in Israel and the United States, have grown apart. There are many reasons: One major factor are the different processes Israeli society and American Jewish communities…

This break from reality isn’t only critical to the individual, but to a nation’s well-being. Holiday prayers remind us of our inherent vulnerability: “…Which nations will live by the sword and which nations by peace, which will go hungry and which will be sated” (Rosh Hashanah liturgy). This verse drives home the random, transient and fragile nature of the supreme…

Battles about cinema openings, clashes over automobile traffic and wars over shopping malls have, in general, ended with crushing defeats for the religious side. Many activities that were formerly banned in the name of the religious status quo are now conducted in the open. Thus, the operation of shopping malls, industry and cultural and public events that necessarily involve religious…

Who are Israel’s Arab citizens? Their civic identity is Israeli while their national identity is Palestinian. There are some who want to sharpen the apparent contradiction embedded in this complex identity. On the one hand, there are Jews who demand “loyalty” to the state as a condition of granting equal rights to Arab citizens. On the other hand, there are…

Some 63 years ago, the Knesset enacted the State Educational Law, which allowed Arabs, ultra-Orthodox, Religious Zionist and secular Jews to maintain separate schools systems. While it must have seemed a good idea at the time, ultimately the results have been tragic. Today, it is not uncommon for students to never meet someone who is “different” until they enter the…

The ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) monopoly over the Chief Rabbinate and the country’s religious services, along with the Haredi veto on any changes in the status quo vis-à-vis religion and state, may seem like an internal Israeli affair – but they are not. Members of the Jewish community in the United States have a great interest in what is going on in…

Tisha be’Av, the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av, the day on which we commemorate the destruction of the Temples in Jerusalem, relates not only to the past, to what was, but also to what exists today, to the here and now. The Second Temple was destroyed, the Sages tell us, because of sin’at ḥinam—groundless hatred. Today, such…

From a strategic standpoint, the infuriating statements, including that the Reform movement is not a Jewish movement but a Christian movement, made last month by Rabbi Yigal Levenstein, head of the pre-army academy in Eli, are not as important as the platform from which he made them: the First Zion and Jerusalem Conference. This conference is the opening shot of…