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 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…

Annual Assessment 2016 5776 PROJECT HEAD Dr. Shlomo Fischer CONTRIBUTORS Avinoam Bar-Yosef, Susanne Cohen-Weisz, Rémi Daniel, Chaya Ekstein, Dan Feferman, Avi Gil, Inbal Hakman, Michael Herzog, Simon Luxemburg, David Landes, Dov Maimon, Steven Popper, Uzi Rebhun, Shmuel Rosner, John Ruskay, Noah Slepkov, Shalom Solomon Wald, Einat Wilf EDITORS Barry Geltman Rami Tal

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,…