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 hatred…

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…

In the wake of the ultra-Orthodox rejection of the proposal to establish a new prayer space south of the Western Wall plaza for use by non-Orthodox denominations, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu finds himself forced to make a dangerous decision. On the one hand, if he pushes ahead with the new prayer space, he will imperil his political partnership with the…

This article was orginally published in the Washington Post on July 4, 2016     The writer, a human rights activist and former political prisoner in the Soviet Union, is chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel. Perhaps better than anyone else of our age, Elie Wiesel grasped the terrible power of silence. He understood that the failure to speak out,…

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Religionization! Religionization! To read the newspaper headlines in Israel, to view its documentary films and attend its expert panels with academics, a stranger might think that upon landing at Ben Gurion Airport, he or she will have arrived at nothing less than a Hebrew-speaking version of Iran. According to those who fear for Israel’s Jewish and democratic…

The Ahad Ha’am once said, “More than the Jewish People have kept Shabbat, Shabbat has kept the Jews.” Today, Jews continue to keep and maintain the Shabbat. However, not everyone interprets what it means to keep and maintain Shabbat in the same way. What does Shabbat and its observance look like in the State of Israel? Can every individual enjoy…

What do the two candidates for the American presidency — Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump — have in common? Almost nothing at all — except that their children are married to Jews. So while it is not yet clear how the future leadership of the Free World will look, there will most definitely be toddlers running on the White House…