Tisha B'Av

Coincidences like this happen. Not realizing the saddest of all sad days on the Jewish calendar --a feat like beating Germany, Brazil, Argentina, Spain, and Italy in the same World Cup-- is upon you the same day you visit...

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Siding Against Elie Wiesel

Elie Wiesel (you may have heard of him) has cast his lot with a cadre of beautifully delusion people who dance beneath the troubling banner of Jerusalem's indivisibility. He makes a salient point about the need for small steps, but...

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Staged: The Problem with “Palestine”

“I grew up a Jew in New York City,” Najla Saïd declares early in her autobiographical one-woman play “Palestine.” Saïd describes herself as a Semitic-looking girl who was raised on the Upper West Side in a politically left-leaning apartment...

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Israel's Disproportionate Response on Haiti

Peggy Shapiro writes a little bit about the impressive Israeli response to the agony and disaster in Haiti. She may be a little too anxious to point out the flimsy responses by other parties to the emergency, but for a...

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An Open Letter to A Citizen of Gaza:

During a troubling bout with demogoguery last January as a trip leader on the Birthright Israel program, I had the strange pleasure of pairing with an Israeli counterpart who happened to be brilliant, insane, and brainwashed toward the Zionist...

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Sea of Galilee

Day Two: Jetlag Above the Kinneret, 6:44 A.M. I was stranded like a vessel on the water; I put faith in nature and set myself adrift, isn't that how all epics begin: a tide of repose and resignation, a tide...

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40 Years Later

The (famous, remarkable, inspiring) picture on the left was taken on June 7, 1967, shortly after the Israeli army won Jerusalem's Old City back from the Jordanians during the Six-Day War. This picture captures three soldiers beside the Western...

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