From Conservative Jew to JLIC President

From Fall 2016 Print Edition, “Transitions” I was raised in a Conservative Jewish household. My family and I attended services on a rather regular basis at our local synagogue, Congregation Beth Am of San Diego, and had Shabbat dinners on…

From Dealing to Teaching

From Fall 2016 Print Edition, “Transitions” “How does a professional drug dealer end up with a PhD, teaching at UCLA? Israeli-born, Professor Adi Jaffe went from selling drugs to a well-respected statistics professor in the UCLA psychology department.”  According to…

Pluralism and the Jewish Community

From Fall 2016 Print Edition, “Transitions” In our era, different societies and communities worldwide advocate pluralism heavily. Pluralism is a uniquely modern idea, in which a society allows — or even encourages — the coexistence of more than one system…

The End of Nietzsche: God Is Not Dead, But Undead

From Fall 2016 Print Edition, “Transitions”  “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.” Friedrich Nietzsche is most memorialized in popular philosophy by this catchy, contentious extract from The Gay Science, published in 1882. For all of…

The Changing Middle East and its Implications for Israel

From Fall 2016 Print Edition, “Transitions” If you’ve been following the news in the Middle East, you have probably noticed a popular trend in the region — instability. Since the 2010 eruption of the Arab spring in Tunisia, political unrest…