350 Jews Watch Two Jews (Successfully) Talk about Israel

By Ben Sales June 17, 2010

On June 16th, J Street NYC and the New York Society for Ethical Culture hosted a vital conversation between Jeremy Ben Ami, J Street Founder and President and Jeffrey Goldberg, National Correspondent for the The Atlantic entitled, “Who Speaks for Me? Israel and America in the 21st Century.” .The Center for Ethical Culture on 64th…

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Who Speaks for the Irvine MSU?

By eweiss June 17, 2010

The college campus has always been a place for heated debates, but has it gone too far? When protesters from the UC-Irvine Muslim Student Union shouted down Ambassador Michael Oren, the school came under fire for allowing students to overstep their bounds as activists.   Freedom of speech is important but the event was a black…

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Circle Up

By Carly Silver June 16, 2010

This summer, I’ve been lucky in my work: my interest in ancient history has led me to work at Archaeology Magazine and my love of family history resulted in an internship with the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society. Enter my Jewish heritage. One of the projects NYG&BS interns work on in the summer is…

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On the World Cup

By smelamed June 15, 2010

This week, the 2010 World Cup kicked off in South Africa. The biggest sporting event in the world, the monthlong slate of games is being hailed as the greatest thing to hit Johannesburg since democracy. Organizers have promised boosts in jobs and tourism, and promoters are convinced that this event will raise the profile and…

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A slim sliver of hope for a more religiously pluralistic Israel

By David A.M. Wilensky June 15, 2010

Crossposted to Jewschool God bless the supreme court of Israel. They aren’t always as daring as I want them to be, but sometimes they do the right thing. And that’s what they did yesterday when they decided that the state may no longer subsidize the learning of yeshiva students. Here’s the full Haaretz article, and…

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An Honest Look at Israel

By Ben Sales June 14, 2010

One Thanksgiving during college, my father told us that though we criticize many of the United States’s policies and actions, we should never forget that we live in the greatest country in the world: a country that pioneered and sustains religious and civic freedom, political equality, tolerance and democracy. His point was that criticism and appreciation should…

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Boo Hookah

By Ben Sales June 10, 2010

In case you were wondering, tobacco is terrible for you. And in case you were wondering, hookah is tobacco. If you’d chosen to forget that until now, don’t worry: I’d sublimated it for some time too. Hookah used to be, for me, a way of looking exotic, feeling Israeli and trying out low-risk smoking, and…

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The People of Israel and Genetics

By Carly Silver June 9, 2010

Who are we? Where do we come from? As it turns out, Jews are just Jews: our very own ethnic group. Recent studies have shown that Jews appear to be genetically different than non-Jews and, indeed, are closely related to one another. This revelation comes through Human “HapMap” Project, which examines human genome sequences; recently,…

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The Punishment of Gazans Must End

By smelamed June 8, 2010

I know we’ve all heard enough about a certain clash on a certain boat in the waters off a certain strip.  So forgive me for once again using this space to talk about the Mavi Marmara melee.  If it’s any consolation, the bulk of this post won’t focus on the early morning events of last…

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J Street U: A plea from a mabat chitzoni

By admin June 8, 2010

This post is by Moriel Rothman and originally appeared on J Street U‘s site. There exists in Israel a powerful fear. It’s a legitimate fear, the traumatic societal residue of exploded buses and falling rockets, hitting Israel against the backdrop of the Iranian threat. But this fear has grown and spread, manipulated by leaders whose…

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WTF, Helen Thomas?

By Ben Sales June 7, 2010

Unless we’re seeking an easy target for righteous indignation, we tend to ignore the mass of anti-Semitic crackpots on the internet. It’s another thing, though, when a respected journalist who’s been covering the Oval Office for half a century tells all the Jews to “get the hell out of Palestine,” as former Hearst columnist Helen Thomas…

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Restructuring the Jewish-Catholic Relationship

By Carly Silver June 2, 2010

Judaism and Catholicism may not seem to go together, but the Catholic Church begs to disagree. In an attempt to show that the papacy isn’t hiding any self-incriminating archives from World War II, the Vatican will open up some World War II-era private archives for public consumption within the next six years. First of all,…

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We get it, Daniel Gordis

By Ben Sales June 2, 2010

Rabbi Daniel Gordis’s writing has brought tears to the eyes of many readers, but his latest column makes me want to cry because it implies that I “don’t get” Jewish history and the Jewish state. When an American friend of his complained that Jews worldwide will come under fire for the flotilla attack on Monday, Rabbi…

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Mavi Marmara and Productive Conversation

By Ben Sales June 1, 2010

The Twitterizing of the news has reached a crisis point in the Israeli-Palestinian forum. For a long time, the Jewish community in the US has viewed the conflict in black-and-white: The elders have decided that Jewish solidarity necessitates categorical defense of Israel, and they treat any deviation from the institutional line as a threat. There is no…

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Idiocy at Sea: The Bigger Picture

By smelamed May 31, 2010

I spent my entire day huddled over my computer, constantly refreshing Ha’aretz and JPost, periodically checking the Gaza flotilla trending topic on Twitter, and generally just trying to make sense of last night’s flotilla fiasco.  And twelve hours into it, I’m still at a loss. Thus far, here’s what we know: early Monday morning, 130…

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