“Off the Beaten Path,” Part II: At the University of Texas, Ex-Hillel Rabbi Brings Students Where Birthright Won’t Take Them

By Daniel Holtzman February 6, 2019

Last summer, a group of students from the University of Texas (UT) at Austin met up with Ben Packer, a fringe, far-right nationalist, in Jerusalem. Their trip leader, then-Hillel Rabbi Moshe Trepp, says the meeting was unplanned, a happy accident. He asked Packer to show them around. “The great guy that he is, and so…

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In Which the Wall Spits Back My Prayers

By Nesha Ruther January 31, 2019

  In my hollowest moments I wish my mother named me after a breathing thing a name with a voice to choke it over I pray for RachelRebeccaLeah, nice Jewish girl names that never die bonded to a land we bulldozed to make our own, but a man calls me the new Josephus curses me…

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How I Can Still Hope for the Future, in America and in Israel

By Derek M. Kwait December 4, 2014

This was a bad week for people who believe in human progress. Whether you imagined America was on its way towards becoming a post-racial society or that residents of the Levant could maybe learn to live peacefully side-by-side someday soon, the better dirt of our nature has again graffitied and burned down our delusions. What…

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Presbyterian Divestment Works, Israel Stands Down, Palestine Goes Free

By Derek M. Kwait July 9, 2014

July 6, 2014: The recent decision of the Presbyterian Church (USA) to divest from three companies, Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard, and Motorola, it sees as playing an instrumental role in Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian Territories, has succeeded beyond the church’s wildest expectations, ending the occupation and bringing about peaceful co-existence between Israelis and Palestinians mere weeks…

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The Reading List: “Easy A,” Jewish Style

By Ben Sales November 8, 2010

The headline couldn’t have said it better: “The fine art of being a slut” [Frum Satire] So I’m not really sure what happened in this story, but it seems like this Palestinian student claimed to be God, got violent on some people and was shot by a masked gunman before his court trial. Crazy. [JPost]…

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The Reading List: Does Ahmadinejad=Adolph Eichmann?

By Ben Sales September 29, 2010

Haaretz columnist Aluf Benn seems to think so. Here’s his take on what should happen when the Iranian demagogue/president visits the Hizbollah stronghold of southern Lebanon. Spoiler Alert: It ends with Mahmoud in a glass cage facing the Israeli Supreme court. [Ha’aretz] And now, the second part of our double feature from the leftist Israeli…

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