My parents were Polish-Jewish Holocaust survivors who fled World War II and ended up in Mexico, where my sister and I were born. They lost most of their families. My mother had only a brother, an uncle and a cousin who survived, while my father...
Flickr Israel announced Thursday the construction of nearly 1,500 housing units in settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, with a possible 1,800 to follow. The new settlement expansion is a direct retaliation to the new PA government which ends the seven-year feud between Fatah and Hamas. Israeli housing minister...
by Rachel Harkham More than three thousand years ago, as the story goes, the Israelites received the Torah from God on top of Mt. Sinai. Shavuot, which begins tonight and lasts two days, celebrates the acceptance of that enduring tradition. At this time it is customary...
Photo credit: Maria Bryk Should a rabbi be forced to give marriage counseling to a same-sex couple? Should a landlord who lives in the building be able to turn away an unmarried couple who wants to rent? Should a doctor be allowed to withhold reproductive services...
by Rachel E. Gross Freedom House Recently, one of our readers noticed something strange at Washington, DC’s Newseum. Standing in front of the World Press Freedom Map—the color-coded map that illustrates which countries enjoy true freedom of the press—she was appalled to see that Israel was listed...
Book Review // Interview | Serge Schmemann Ari Shavit: An Insider’s Guide to Zionism Ari Shavit’s book, My Promised Land, will not be of much practical help for peacemakers or policy makers. He does not resolve who has the greater right to Jerusalem, what should happen to...
BOOK REVIEW | BARBARA PROBST SOLOMON In Search of Peace at Auschwitz Peter Matthiessen (who died this April at the age of 86) possesses an extraordinary range of bona fides—co-founder of The Paris Review, world famous naturalist, explorer, author of myriad books and the only winner of...
OPINION | Eetta Prince-Gibson Give Peace—And Women—A Chance Studies show that including women in peace negotiations improves chances of success. As the non-negotiations sputter, it becomes clear that we are stuck once again in an opaque process where each side attempts to apportion geography based on narrowly defined...
by Wesley G. Pippert Aaron David Miller, an adviser on the Middle East for six secretaries of state, believes that the next few years in the region will be much like the present--“broke and angry and dysfunctional.” Israel, he says, “will keep on keeping on.” In a...
Like most Jewish sub-groups, Bukharians, who lived for centuries in Central Asia, have an array of dishes they’ve carried with them through years of political upheaval and emigration. There are no shortage of Bukharian restaurants in Israel and New York—in Queens’ Rego Park neighborhood, especially—but...