Column
The announcement notes that “creating the Chair-elect role enhances the effectiveness of the transition.” So far, the transition to a new chairperson has been anything but smooth or effective.
After 72 years, many take its existence for granted. But with so many still wishing it dead, it’s worth thinking about how dangerous life for Jews would be without it.
This Memorial Day, we cannot stand beside you in person, but will stand by you in every other sense. We stand at attention, bow our heads and remember. We remember that we wear the uniform of the IDF, that we represent the values the fallen embodied: commitment, devotion, comradeship and courage.
Due to their history, Jews overwhelmingly support the rights of immigrants and refugees. Still, it’s no use pretending that the debate about the issue hasn’t changed.
Corona has exacerbated a new virus online, touching on the regulation of the Internet, global restrictions on hate speech, national security measures and the prospect of tougher legal sanctions against both individual extremists and the platforms that host them.
Such discord is becoming commonplace among Jewish communal leadership in an increasingly polarized political environment.
Dianne Lob’s selection is an earthquake in American Jewish organizational life not because of anything she has said or done, but because of her organizational affiliation with HIAS.
Pompeo’s stand on annexation of settlements is not just a departure from past administrations policies on peace, but based in long overdue respect for Israeli democracy.
Unlike Israel, its Middle Eastern neighbors were artificial creations through which the model of the nation-state was imposed upon unruly tribal areas in the hope and expectation that this would give them order, stability and prosperity.
A dispute over the choice of a new leader for the umbrella group of “major” Jewish organizations calls into question whether even the pretense of a unified voice is still possible.
Given a choice between maintaining the loyalty of a smaller and older right-wing Zionist base, or aligning with a larger and better funded liberal Jewish communal structure, the nominating committee may be actively and intentionally shifting the organization’s direction.
Americans think of the prime minister as an extremist. But on the issues that matter most, he’s content to govern with Gantz and without some of his right-wing allies.