Soviet Jewry’s leading man has had a career of many acts: dissident, politician and now, head of Israel’s Jewish Agency. Through them all, he has held on to his belief in peoplehood, an idea he thinks can cure what ails the Jewish world. It is a...
The question of who is a Jew has become a knot of complexities. I once heard Benjamin Netanyahu say in jest at a lunch at The New York Times—I think he was Israel’s UN ambassador at the time—that the Cabinet had thrown up its hands over...
In Genesis, Jacob asks his father-in-law, Laban, to compensate him for 14 years of unpaid labor. His request is strange: all the speckled and spotted goats and all the dark sheep from Laban’s flock—the least desirable animals. Jacob then peels back the bark of tree...
Eugenia Brin was 48 when she first noticed that her left leg was dragging. It took two years for doctors finally to diagnose her with early onset Parkinson’s disease, because she didn’t have tremors or other easily identifiable symptoms. The diminutive Brin, trained as an...
Finding Faith in DNA Why do some people believe in God, while others don’t? Is it a person’s choice, the result of upbringing or simply divine will? Theologians have grappled with this question for centuries, but over the last few years, scientists have jumped into the...
“Find out if your girlfriend is a feminist before you get too far into it,” Phyllis Schlafly told assembled students at The Citadel military academy in April. “Some of them are pretty. They don’t all look like Bella Abzug.” This was April 2012—not, say, 1972, a...
In late May, protestors rioted against the tens of thousands of African migrant workers and asylum seekers living in south Tel Aviv. They attacked passersby, smashed cars and vandalized shops. Within two weeks, the government began a brutal campaign to deport refugees from South Sudan. Interior...
There’s nothing wrong with negotiating with your enemies. There is something wrong if you don’t know that those sitting across the table from you are your enemies. Too many Americans, Europeans and even Israelis still don’t grasp that Iran’s rulers—not average Iranians, but those who...
On the sleepy afternoon of March 21, 2012, alarm sirens went off all over Jerusalem, sending me and my racing heart lunging toward our air raid shelter. Squeezed in among my neighbors, bags of old clothes and various bicycles, I found my mind wandering back...
I was nervous when I answered the phone call from Bennett Greenspan, president and CEO of the genetic testing company Family Tree DNA. As part of this special issue dedicated to genes and religion, a few of us at Moment swabbed our cheeks and sent...