israeli-schoolchildren

What Israeli School Children Learn About American Jewish Life

The year 2017 was another rocky one in the relationship between Israel and many American Jews, punctuated by conflict over matters once considered common ground. Some controversies—including a backlash over comments about American Jews’ military service by Israeli deputy foreign minister Tzipi Hotovely—suggest a level of misunderstanding that could end up harming both sides.

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american jewish lit

American Jewish Literature: Dead or Alive?

With Gal Beckerman /  Nicholas Delbanco / Nathan Englander /  Rebecca Goldstein / Allegra Goodman / Mohsin Hamid / Dara Horn / Aaron Lansky / Ruby Namdar / Alicia Ostriker / Robert Pinsky / Jane Yolen As Moment’s culture editor, whether I am speaking with publishers, authors, scholars or people I meet during Shabbat morning kiddush, sooner or later I am inevitably asked the same question: Are great American Jewish books still being written? Despite the popularity of the question, it is out of date. In just the last decade, there has been a revolution in what constitutes a Jewish text. Many of the best and most powerful Jewish “books” now come in the form of films, TV shows, podcasts, graphic novels and, some might even argue, tweets. Absent the constraints of the bound written page, these Jewish “books” allow previously unheard...

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dahlia-lithwick

The Legal Future of #MeToo

No reporter likes to be sucked into a story she’s covering. But when a Washington Post article late last year quoted two law clerks by name who said that Judge Alex Kozinski of the Ninth Federal Circuit Court of Appeals had shown them pornography in his chambers, while four other unnamed women described other inappropriate behavior by the judge, Dahlia Lithwick decided to speak up.

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ask-the-rabbis-predator

Ask The Rabbis | How Would You Counsel A Sexual Predator?

In every contact with serial bullies, victimizers or predators, we must carefully balance natural empathy for the person before us with solidarity and justice concerning the victims. Teshuvah (repentance) is always the goal, yet false expressions of remorse are an abuser’s modus operandi. INDEPENDENT Many a predator and addict I work with has been helped by the mystical concepts of Kabbalah. Every one of us comes into this world with an emptiness born of a cosmic vacuum we glibly refer to as Genesis. Thus, you and I are children of the vacuum, and we endeavor throughout our lives to fill that void as best we can with meaningfulness. Some of us, however, try in vain to fill it with food, others with drugs or alcohol and yet others with sex, either at our own expense or that...

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