This article is in response to an op-ed piece by Thomas Friedman published in the New York Times on November 10th, 2012. I would like to express my utmost respect for Mr. Friedman as a renowned journalist and state that…
A helpmate opposite him: the Jewish vision of respecting women
This article is in response to the piece published in Ha’Am on October 21st, 2012. I would like to make it clear that I respect the writer of the original article, and welcome all further discussion of this issue. Religious…
First Farsi Holocaust text connects Iranians to Jewish history
On October 14, I was privileged to be a student delegate at 30 Years After’s 3rd Biennial Conference. 30 Years After is the civic and political voice of America’s Iranian Jews, the first and only organization of its kind. The…
Inked: a living Holocaust memorial
In Zakhor, the famous commentary on Jewish history and memory, historian Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi writes, “Only in Israel and nowhere else is the injunction to remember felt as a religious imperative to an entire people.” Confluent with that statement is…
Yiddishkayt’s Helix Project: a modern adventure into the forgotten Yiddish past
Cobblestone paths and narrowly winding streets. Freshly painted yellow buildings and crumbling courtyards boarded up in disrepair. Vilnius, summer 2012, or as the Yiddish speaking Jewish population called it prior to World War II, Vilna, the Jerusalem of Lithuania. Ten…
Ultra-Orthodox Jews, unemployment rates, and the Israeli economy
As Americans and inevitable participants in this country’s financial infrastructure, we are all acutely aware of the unforgiving crisis engulfing the economy of the United States and spreading to the rest of the world. In the wake of the ailing…
Palestinian ‘freedom riders’: the protest we’ve been waiting for?
Israeli police have detained six Palestinians dubbed West Bank Freedom Riders who boarded a Jerusalem-bound bus used by Jewish settlers. The activists say they drew inspiration from 1960s US civil rights demonstrators who campaigned under the same name against segregated…
Obituary: Nosson Tzvi Finkel (1943-2011)
By Joshua Friedlander The passing of elderly rabbis is a fairly regular, if unhappy, event in Jerusalem; but few of them as wide a ripple across the Jewish world as that of Rabbi Nosson Tzvi Finkel, rosh yeshiva (dean) of…
Halloween and Judaism: a contradiction or a coalition?
Halloween—the night of disguised merriment and childhood dreams. The night where it doesn’t matter if you were an all-star on your high school baseball team, genius enough to discover the theory of relativity, or had the body of an angel—you…
Interfaith challah sales help to prevent genocide
Photo by Jacob Goldberg Arriving at Hillel on the last night of sukkot and passing the wooden sukkah on your right painted green, yellow and red, you have the unmistakable feeling of entering a homogenous Jewish environment. Upon ascending one…