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Election night: a look at a congressional legend

November 6, 2012 by Yona Remer

From 7 a.m. today until 8 p.m. tonight, millions of Americans will engage in their ultimate civic duty and vote for the president of the United States and various other local politicians and initiatives. While it would be foolhardy to project the results of the presidential race prior to polling results, the local congressional race […]

Deflection of political criticism leads to unfriendly international neighborhoods

October 30, 2012 by Jacob Elijah Goldberg

Many of Israel’s ardent defenders would sooner point to injustices taking place in other Middle Eastern countries than entertain the idea of having a discussion about what the Jewish State is doing right and what it is doing wrong. Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, the argument goes. In a region of […]

Israel and apartheid: a lesson in the risks of media bias

October 28, 2012 by Alan Naroditsky

For Israel, a country trapped under the brutally judgmental microscope of global scrutiny, public image is everything. A recent poll published on October 23, 2012 by Haaretz (a leading Israeli news source), and its accompanying piece by Israeli journalist Gideon Levy, is undoubtedly a leap in the wrong direction. The survey, reportedly conducted by the […]

Blurring democracy: the Orthodox vision of respecting women

October 21, 2012 by Miriam Pinski

It was my first time at the Western Wall. It should have been a beautiful and emotional moment, one that allowed me to connect to the history of the Jewish people. And yet, something irked me. Perhaps it was the shoulder and knee coverings I was required to wear in the brutal heat. Perhaps I […]

Inked: a living Holocaust memorial

October 18, 2012 by Yona Remer

In Zakhor, the famous commentary on Jewish history and memory, historian Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi writes, “Only in Israel and nowhere else is the injunction to remember felt as a religious imperative to an entire people.” Confluent with that statement is the fact that many of the Jewish people’s most haunting moments have been institutionalized, woven […]

Ultra-Orthodox Jews, unemployment rates, and the Israeli economy

September 13, 2012 by Alan Naroditsky

As Americans and inevitable participants in this country’s financial infrastructure, we are all acutely aware of the unforgiving crisis engulfing the economy of the United States and spreading to the rest of the world. In the wake of the ailing economy, “unemployment” is a term that has slithered its way out of economics textbooks and […]