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17th Feb 2012

Come learn with us says coexistant Principal to vandals

Melanie Lidman. Jerusalem Post. That is what Shalom Dichter, the executive-director of Hand in Hand: Center for Jewish-Arab Bilingual Education in Israel, wants his students to take away from a vandalism attack against their unique school. On Tuesday morning, Dichter was greeted by giant letters spray painted on the wall next to a basketball court: “Death to Arabs, Kahane was right.” Large black block letters on white stone, cutting to the heart of a painful conflict in the city.

17th Feb 2012

Jewish ideas daily. In God they trust?

Eliot Jager. Jerusalem Post. Israel’s secular founders were, on the whole, Jewishly literate. But for all their practicality, they seem to have supposed that their progeny would become versed in the Jewish canon through osmosis. Few Israeli secular politicians have pushed for teaching Judaism, broadly defined, in the public schools. The Orthodox political parties, for their part, are happy to have public money for Jewish education directed to the parochial schools that their children attend.

17th Feb 2012

A League of Their Own

I was dressing as a Haredi woman not to be provocative but because I wanted to feel how our ultra-Orthodox clients feel when they get on a segregated bus. The last few times I went on a freedom ride nothing happened. No one harassed me and no one sat down next to me. Haredi women have told us they get harassed more because they are breaking the “rules” of their own community. I wanted to see for myself.

17th Feb 2012

America’s Jews are worried

Op-ed: Israel’s Orthodox monopoly has changed from unpleasant annoyance to strategic threat Yizhar Hess Last week, a contingent of leaders from the North American Conservative movement returned to the US. All the members of this mission, rabbis, congregation leaders and philanthropists, had already been to Israel dozens of times. They are major activists in Jewish Federations, AIPAC, Hadassah, you name it. They didn’t come as tourists; they came to ask what has happened, but mainly...

11th Feb 2012

Keep Dreaming: God comes in many flavours

David Breakstone. Jerusalem Post. The good news is that, unlike ice cream, the many flavors God comes in never run out. The bad news is that too many of our rabbis behave like the server behind the counter, telling us just what flavor the Deity is available in today. Absurd beyond belief. And I’ve chosen my words deliberately. How can they have spent the hours they have studying Talmud and not understand that being monotheistic doesn’t mean being monolithic?

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