Last month, a set of advertisements aimed at encouraging the return of Israelis living abroad, were removed from the Israeli Ministry of Immigrant Absorption’s YouTube channel. As a part of a resolution adopted by the government in 2010, these advertisements feature images like the young girl who disappoints her Israeli grandarents when she reveals her… [Read more…]
January 10, 2012
by Jacob Elijah Goldberg
On Monday, J Street U at UCLA kicked off the quarter with a discussion with Jeremy Ben-Ami — former presidential adviser and president of J Street. The presentation consisted of a summary of J Street’s policies and a Q&A session with students, staff, and faculty. Ben-Ami, who has familial ties to Israel and has lived there himself… [Read more…]
January 10, 2012
by Tessa Nath
Leon Weinstein and his daughter Natalie Gold Lumer in a loving embrace. (photo by Clifford Lester/Jewish Journal) A 101 year-old man died on December 28th, 2011 in his bedroom in the early hours of the morning. His daughter, a phone call away, expected the inevitable. This man was Leon Weinstein, the oldest survivor of the… [Read more…]
January 7, 2012
by Alan Naroditsky
Social media is quickly becoming the lifeblood of all communication, permanently altering the way people connect. Trendsetting behemoths such as Facebook and Twitter permeate every nook and cranny of our virtual and corporeal lives, saturating every fiber of human interaction with their omnipotence. We are bombarded with live and geo-tagged updates, incessant wall posts, enormous… [Read more…]
December 31, 2011
by Ha'Am Contributor
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for our blog! Click here to see the complete report. This quarter, we had readers in countries as distant as Libya, Rwanda, Kenya, Egypt, South Africa, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, India, the Philippines, Germany, Russia, France, the Netherlands, Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Argentina, Ecuador, Australia, and New… [Read more…]
December 28, 2011
by Jacob Elijah Goldberg
Rabbinical Council of America president Rabbi Schmuel Goldin issued a statement on Monday dispelling allegations that the RCA has taken a stand on reparative therapy for Jews with unwanted same-sex attraction. The RCA website has previously listed an organization called JONAH (Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing) as a therapy resource for Jews with unwanted… [Read more…]
December 25, 2011
by Jacob Elijah Goldberg
Haifa Last year, on the same day the forest fires began ravaging the Carmel region of northern Israel, the Haifa municipality erected a Christmas tree sculpture comprised of over 5,000 recycled water bottles in honor of the Christian holiday. The tree, designed by Israeli artist Hadas Itzcovitch and her father Ernest Itzcovitch, is 38 feet tall and is… [Read more…]
December 25, 2011
by Jacob Elijah Goldberg
Gaza Last week, The Guardian told the story of the Qubrsi brothers — two of approximately 1,400 Christians residing in Gaza today. Brothers Karam and Peter are currently the only members of their family still in Gaza. Their sisters Rani and Mai fled to Bethlehem in 2007 after the manager of Gaza’s Bible Society Bookstore,… [Read more…]
December 19, 2011
by Josh Friedlander
Israel needs America – financially, diplomatically, and militarily. It’s a fact. So when U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton makes an observation, even about a relatively minor point of domestic policy, Israelis tend to sit up and listen. That is not to say that the point in contention is minor to everyone. Secretary Clinton, speaking… [Read more…]
December 13, 2011
by Jacob Elijah Goldberg
Last week, over 100 Orthodox rabbis around the world added their signatures to a declaration condemning a recent event that the media identified as an “same-sex Orthodox wedding.” On November 6, Yeshiva University-ordained Rabbi Steven Greenberg, known to many as the first openly gay Orthodox rabbi, officiated at a marriage ceremony between grooms Yoni Bock and Ron… [Read more…]
December 12, 2011
by Josh Friedlander
The winds of scandal were blowing in full force across the Jewish world last week. An article printed in an online publication run by Yeshiva University students became the centre of controversy, and the school demanded that the article be removed. The ensuing debate was covered by Fox News and later even in some other news sources and… [Read more…]
December 5, 2011
by Josh Friedlander
by Joshua Friedlander “Democracy Under Attack” screamed the webpage of Ha’aretz – a popular, left-leaning Israeli broadsheet last week. The event prompting the headline was a proposed alteration to the wording of the Libel Law, submitted this month to the Knesset by three members of its ruling coalition. Having passed a first reading, the change is… [Read more…]
December 1, 2011
by Jacob Elijah Goldberg
For the past six years, villagers and international activists have convened in the village of Bil’in to protest the presence of Israel’s security barrier. The inhabitants of Bil’in, which lies just west of Ramallah and about ofur kilometers east of the Green Line, claim that the barrier separates them from sixty percent of their farmland. In 2007,… [Read more…]
November 30, 2011
by Ha'Am Contributor
by Adam J. Deutsch Over the last eight months, nonviolent protests have erupted across Syria; while the central regions including Homs and Hama have been particular hotbeds of revolution for organized youth, protesters have also gathered in the suburbs of Damascus, the southern province of Daraa, and the northern provinces of Aleppo, Idib, and Hassakeh.… [Read more…]
November 27, 2011
by Josh Friedlander
by Joshua Friedlander Just the other week, New York cops cleared out hundreds of Occupy Wall Street protesters from Zuccotti Park in Manhattan’s financial district. There was a feeling among the protesters that the movement had come of age, that at last the image of bored hipsters latching onto a cause had been somewhat dispelled. As I… [Read more…]
November 23, 2011
by Ha'Am Contributor
I am a militant man, because I have been conditioned to be a militant man. I never asked to have the urge to wield a weapon, to want to delve into battle, to gallop terribly against my fellow man. I was born immaculate, so innocent, still, I was turned fierce and unyielding. I am a… [Read more…]
November 16, 2011
by Ha'Am Contributor
Israeli police have detained six Palestinians dubbed West Bank Freedom Riders who boarded a Jerusalem-bound bus used by Jewish settlers. The activists say they drew inspiration from 1960s US civil rights demonstrators who campaigned under the same name against segregated buses. Palestinians from the West Bank are not allowed to cross into Jerusalem without Israeli… [Read more…]
November 15, 2011
by Josh Friedlander
By Joshua Friedlander The passing of elderly rabbis is a fairly regular, if unhappy, event in Jerusalem; but few of them as wide a ripple across the Jewish world as that of Rabbi Nosson Tzvi Finkel, rosh yeshiva (dean) of the Mir Yeshiva, who passed away on November 8th at the age of 68, after… [Read more…]
Jacob Elijah Goldberg
Moshe Kahn
Moses Lapin
Joshua Yasmeh
Tessa Nath
Yoni Herskovitz
Alan Naroditsky
Ashton Rosin
Ben Steiner
Ha'Am Contributor
Sarah Elbaum
Diane Bani-Esraili
Josh Friedlander
January 17, 2012
by Ashton Rosin
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