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What remains of the religious status quo?

Relations between the Jewish religion and the State of Israel began to take form even before the state was founded. Since then, and over the past 70 years, it has been customary to speak about a “status quo” on matters of religion and state. Politicians, the courts, the media and the wider public regularly refer to this status quo. But…
24/07/2017

Israel’s ‘Status Quo’ On Religion Is In Chaos

In this document, the future prime minister promised that in the future Jewish state, Shabbat would be the statutory day off for Jews; that all official kitchens would observe kashrut; that marriage and divorce would be conducted according to religious law; and that the educational institutions of the various religious streams would be allowed autonomy beyond the definition of a…
06/07/2017

Leviathans, Minnows and the Rule of Law

One of the talmudic sages, R. Hananiah the Temple prefect, made the same point: “Pray for the welfare of the government. For if it were not for fear of it, one man would swallow his fellow alive (Avot 3:3).” But the powers we voluntarily surrender to the leviathan are incomparably vast and dangerous. The government employs institutionalized violence internally (the…
06/07/2017
What JPPI’s 2017 Global Jewish Dialogue on Jerusalem Teaches us about the Kotel Crisis
Identity

What JPPI’s 2017 Global Jewish Dialogue on Jerusalem Teaches us about the Kotel Crisis

JPPI’s 2017 Global Jewish Dialogue on Jerusalem and the Jewish People offers data that explains why the Jewish world uses the word “betrayal” in reaction to recent Israeli government decisions freezing the Kotel compromise and initiating a new law on conversion
02/07/2017
Identity
Op-Ed: Red Lines Belong to the People
Geopolitics

Op-Ed: Red Lines Belong to the People

Rabin was right; red lines are not for prime ministers to draw. They need to hold their cards close to the chest. Real red lines belong to the people. The following is an op-ed originally published by the Jerusalem Post.In the spring of 1995, as the Washington bureau chief of Ma’ariv, I wrote a couple of analyses explaining why then…
26/06/2017
Geopolitics
India, Israel and the Jewish People
Asia

India, Israel and the Jewish People

  INDIA, ISRAEL AND THE JEWISH PEOPLE Looking Ahead, Looking Back 25 Years after Normalization   With a Foreword by H.E. President Reuven Rivlin   Shalom Salomon Wald and Arielle Kandel
19/06/2017
Asia
Raising Jewish Children: Research and Indications for Intervention
Identity

Raising Jewish Children: Research and Indications for Intervention

     Family, Engagement, and Jewish Continuity among American Jews   Sylvia Barack Fishman and Steven M. Cohen   Learning Jewishness, Jewish Education, and Jewish Identity   Sylvia Barack Fishman and Shlomo Fischer Contributors: Rachel S. Bernstein, Dov Maimon and Shmuel Rosner  
05/06/2017
Identity

Voyage to Identity

On Shavuot night, hundreds of thousands of people will leave their homes and celebrate a “white night.” For a few hours, they will detach themselves from the powerful forces that move all Israelis — money, politics, celebrities, disputes, and sports. Large numbers of women and men will assemble to study Jewish texts and ideas. This amazing event — the Tikkun…
01/06/2017

Language as a Tool for Change

Although many of the incidents that today’s media portray as racist do fall within the category set forth in the Penal Code, the present definition does not delineate clear boundaries. It is a frequent cause of confusion and inconsistency, and hampers the formulation of commonly accepted criteria for quantifying the phenomenon and assessing its scope. Moreover, it could potentially cause…
25/05/2017
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