For women, silence can be literally deadly. A few months ago, I attended a prayer meeting at Jerusalem’s Jeshurun Synagogue to mark the annual international day protesting violence against women. Attendance was sparse. The men’s section bare. A […]
Thirty years ago when I first landed in Israel, straight off an El Al flight from New York, there was no more vilified or ridiculed airline than Israel’s. Some of the criticism was certainly justified. Stewardesses were known […]
It isn’t the flu bug that’s giving Israelis a feeling of nausea and head pains in unprecedented numbers this winter. It’s an epidemic of shamelessness. It’s President Weizman brazenly declaring that taking “gifts from a friend” is perfectly […]
I was sitting on a bus on the way to Jerusalem’s town center a few weeks before Rosh Hashana, when the radio started broadcasting a commercial from the Reform and Conservative movements. It went something like this: “Ask […]
The Council of Torah Sages has banned the Internet. In their decree, they say, among other things: “The Internet is a danger 1,000 times greater [than television — which they banned thirty years ago], and is liable to […]
Newspaper columns are, by their nature, a place to explore the particulars of social events closely aligned to one’s own culture, to a specific time, and a very specific place. Most of the time, I follow that format, […]
Someone recently asked me about my hopes for the new millennium. While I’m getting a little tired of all this millennium business, still, the question got me thinking. I’d like to rephrase it: In the year 2999, what […]
Since I can write about anything I want in this column, this week I’ve chosen to tell a tale of two sisters-in-law, Jere and Shifra Finer of Baltimore and Monsey. Why should an Israeli columnist in an Israeli […]
When the pipe bomb went off in the lively seaside village of Netanya recently, I remember thinking: Oh no. Here we go again. The bombings. The “I can’t condone” of the Palestinians (why can’t they say “We condemn?”) […]