Admitting Awkward Things: Or, Coming to Terms with Unsavory History

By Jonathan Katz February 18, 2014

I think my education started early. I remember sitting in the car with my mother at the age of 10, en route from my Hebrew school to … somewhere. It was the spring of 2002, height of the Second Intifada,and the rhetoric that went alongside it. I was narrating all of the things we had…

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No, I Will Not Stop Criticizing Israel on Facebook

By Jonathan Katz January 28, 2014

I post a lot of things about the Holy Land on Facebook. I mean, I post about a lot of things – South Africa, migration politics, tasty coconut-based desserts – but also a lot about Israel and Palestine. And many of the things I post are not terribly adulatory of Israel. In fact, they’re starkly…

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Racist Moms, Russian Spies, and Chabadniks: The Latest Sensations from Israel

By Catie Damon November 11, 2013

For 12 weeks I dated an Israeli. The majority of our relationship involved watching TV and smoking cigarettes on his couch. National Geographic was our favorite channel, since it was guaranteed to be in English. At first I felt guilty about staying indoors when I could hear Tel Aviv’s beaches a block away, but I…

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Meet Steve, Sarah, Eliana, and Jonathan.

An Inter-Everything Conversation About the Pew Survey

By Derek M. Kwait October 28, 2013

Part 1 in a 3 part series.   We might just be the last Jewish organization to respond to the big bad Pew Survey and we’re fine with that. It seems like every response so far is other people telling us what how we need to feel about it, whether we should be scared,  take…

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Israelis Have Funny Names (See Below: Citrus Dolinsky)

By David A.M. Wilensky March 14, 2013

I just read this terrific piece in Tablet about Yityish Aynaw, the newest Miss Israel — and the first Ethiopian woman to win the pageant. (“Asked by judges why she deserved the title, Aynaw said it was about time that a black woman wore the crown.”) Very moving, you should go read it, etc. The article…

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