Proud and Prickly with a Soft Heart

Muscular. Courageous. Bronzed. The stereotype of the sun-kissed sabra is Ari ben Canaan, as played by actor Paul Newman in the 1960 movie Exodus. The word sabra stems from the name of the prickly pear cactus—tzabar in Hebrew and sabr in Arabic—whose thick thorny skin covers a sweet and succulent soft flesh. An affectionate metaphor, it describes native-born Israelis whose rough and impertinent manners hide their good hearts and sensitive souls.

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Ask the Rabbis | What does it mean to be pro-Israel today?

Independent Being pro-Israel today means being ever so cautious about what you read in the biased media about Israel. At the same time, it also means being ever so cautious about turning a blind eye to what is going on in Israel. I am a staunch defender of Israel in the face of the venomous anti-Israel rhetoric constantly being pumped into cyberspace and other media, not only by non-Jewish sources but by blind-sighted Jewish sources as well. We who are pro-Israel must become more informed about the history of Arab-Israeli tension, which goes back centuries further than 1948, and not live in the historical vacuum that is the source of the misinformation endlessly proliferating on both sides. Being pro-Israel today also beckons us to lift up our voices against certain governmental, religious and societal polity in...

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“Jewish” Oscar Winners

In honor of the Academy Awards, Moment looks back at some “Jewish” Best Picture winners of yesteryear. Gentleman’s Agreement (1947) The dashing Gregory Peck built his career around playing men of principle and conviction; To Kill a Mockingbird’s Atticus Finch, after all, is a paragon of justice and courage. In Gentleman’s Agreement, directed by Elia Kazan, Peck was Phil Green-cum-Greenberg, a gentile journalist who goes undercover as a Jewish man to investigate anti-Semitism in New York and its affluent suburb, Darien, Connecticut—an epicenter of Anglo-Saxonism. The movie, controversial in its time, garnered three Academy Awards, for Best Picture, Best Supporting Actress and Best Director. Kazan later famously fell out of favor after spilling names—among them Jewish actors—to the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Annie Hall (1977) Woody Allen’s Jewish fingerprints are all over this film, from an early scene in which Alvy Singer...

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Jewish Word | Proud and Prickly with a Soft Heart

By Eileen Lavine Muscular. Courageous. Bronzed. The stereotype of the sun-kissed sabra is Ari ben Canaan, as played by actor Paul Newman in the 1960 movie Exodus. The word sabra stems from the name of the prickly pear cactus—tzabar in Hebrew and sabr in Arabic—whose thick thorny skin covers a sweet and succulent soft flesh. An affectionate metaphor, it describes native-born Israelis whose rough and impertinent manners hide their good hearts and sensitive souls. Sabra originated as a slur, according to The Comprehensive Dictionary of Slang, by Ruvik Rosenthal, referring to uncivilized Jews born in Israel. It didn’t pick up its positive spin until journalist Uri Kesari wrote a 1931 essay in the newspaper Do’ar Ha-Yom, entitled “We Are the Leaves of the Sabra!,” in which he appealed to newly arrived immigrants to respect their native-born counterparts. Palestinian-born Jews quickly appropriated sabra as a badge of...

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Jeffrey Rosen: High Stakes for Church and State Separation

By Jeffrey Rosen Of all the issues that could be significant in the 2012 presidential election, the future of church-state separation hasn’t gotten much attention. It should however, because in the Republican primaries so far, it’s striking how vigorously nearly all of the candidates—and not just those favored by the Tea Party—have questioned the constitutional basis of the separation of church and state. From Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry to Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, the leading candidates have endorsed a Tea Party vision of religious supremacy, which holds that the Supreme Court in the 1960s was wrong to prevent the government from sponsoring sectarian prayers in school and other open endorsements of religion over secularism. Since the next president could appoint a Supreme Court justice who might tilt the Court further to the right on matters...

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Marshall Breger: Why Jews Can’t Criticize Sharia Law

Similarities between Judaism and Islam are easy to see. Both are monotheistic religions for whom the Lord is One. Both are religions based on revelation. In both, law is central, and personal and social existence is governed by a divinely ordained legal system. There are also many obvious parallels between Judaism’s legal system, known as halacha, and the Islamic legal order of sharia law.

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Gershom Gorenberg: Israel’s Democracy Needs Your Help

One bill in the Knesset is aimed at keeping human rights groups from filing suit before Israel’s Supreme Court. Another would bar mosques from using loudspeakers for the call to prayer; the supposed ban on noise pollution says nothing of church bells, sirens announcing the beginning of the Sabbath or music blasting out of clubs. Yet another bill aims at hobbling the press by drastically increasing what courts can award in libel suits, without requiring plaintiffs to prove they’ve suffered damages. These are only a few examples. A growing tide of anti-democratic legislation has been flooding the Knesset since the start of its current term in 2009. Each Knesset member who submits a new bill aimed against the Supreme Court, free speech, political dissent or the rights of the Arab minority provokes other legislators to translate...

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