Ameinu | Liberal Values. Progressive Israel.

Take Action!

Become a member of Ameinu and enjoy the benefits today. Donate your time and volunteer. Give now to help ensure a strong liberal Jewish voice in America and Israel. Get involved with one of our upcoming or ongoing Events & Projects. Browse our resources to see how our knowledge can help foster your activism.

Current Issues

Is Israel Imprisoned in the Familiar Ceremony of War?

By David Grossman

Writing in Haaretz Grossman says:
After its severe strike on Gaza, Israel would do well to stop, turn to Hamas' leaders and say:

Until Saturday Israel held its fire in the face of thousands of Qassams from the Gaza Strip. Now you know ...
Full Story

Encountering Peace: How will it end?

By Gershon Baskin, PhD

Writing in the Jerusalem Post, Baskin says:
The national morale is quite high. Most Israelis are thinking: How good it feels to see our side winning a war. The attack on Gaza is supported by an overwhelming majority of Israelis who are fed up wit...
Full Story

Israeli Conversion Crisis

By Rabbi Vernon Kurtz

Speaking at the recent Jewish Agency Assembly in Jerusalem, Rabbi Vernon Kurtz shared his strong feelings about the current conversion crisis in Israel. ...
Full Story

Seek Peace and Pursue It

Yitzhak Rabin's Lessons in Leadership

By Sarah Michaels Levy

As the 13th anniversary of Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination falls in the same week that the people of the United States elect a new leader, Sara Michaels Levy examines the role of the leader as reflected in Rabin’s words....
Full Story

Resist Being Discouraged

By Sidney Topol

HaTikva, The Hope- The original Zionist Anthem – it predates the Jewish State and even when times seem to make it no longer relevant, we learn from Sid Topol that we can’t lose hope, that the success of the peace process depends on our support....
Full Story

Politics Now

By Yigal Tzachor

Israel’s Winograd Commission has been disbanded and so the conduct of the government during the Second Lebanon War is no longer on the agenda. The only current public debates are the one between Minister of Justice Daniel Friedman and President of I...
Full Story

Israel

BINA Aims to Create Israel's National Spirit

By David J. Steiner

Is a secular yeshiva an oxymoron, or is it a starting point for developing a new Israeli attitude to Israeli/Jewish identity? Read about this institute and its combination of Jewish study and social action work which is a source of hope and pride for...
Full Story

Providing Support for Palestinian Olive Farmers

By Bracha Ben-Avraham

For people to be truly free they must be able to feed themselves, today and into the future. In Israel and Palestine, olive groves provide this security. When olive groves are destroyed today, the past and future are destroyed along with them.
...
Full Story

"No thanks. We'd rather sit in the dark".

By Dan Fleshler

There are enemies of everything Israeli who are like the storied Jewish mamas who prefer to suffer in darkness because suffering is more comfortable, suffering –and anger about the past—is what they are used to. That’s the simile that comes to mind a...
Full Story

The Challenge of Iran

The Case for Talking to Tehran

By Trita Parsi

A signal from Israel that it supports American-Iranian talks would strengthen the hands of Tehran's pragmatists and compel Iran's cautious supreme leader to rein in his more aggressive and ambitious subordinates....
Full Story

America

Israel and Zionist Advocacy: A New Era

By Ami Isseroff

An exploration of the traditional friendship between the United States and the Jewish State, as it is reflected now that there is a new family in the neighborhood....
Full Story

The Economics of Oppression

By Avram Lyon

Advertisments have appeared recently in a Guatemalan newspaper for men to work at a meat packing plant in Postville, IA. The only meat packing plant in Postville, is the Agriprocessor plant, the object of a raid by Immigrations and Customs Enforcemen...
Full Story

Why The New Middle East Peace Lobby Has a Chance

By Dan Fleshler

"Realistic Dove" blogger Dan Flshler explains why he is hopeful about the new J Street project ...
Full Story

Campus & Youth Update

Habonim Hooked Me - I Felt Alive

By Alisa Belinkoff Katz

I started going to Habonim Camp when I was ten years old. From the minute I went, I was hooked.... Habonim had me hooked because I felt so truly alive there. ...
Full Story

Building Hope in the City

By from the Baltimore Jewish Times

With over 2 million dollars raised an effort called "The Baltimore Model" has brought new homes and new hope to Oliver, Baltimore, but not without hands on help from Habonim Dror. Get the whole story here....
Full Story

Cross-Cultural Environmental Studies in Israel

By Rabbi Michael Cohen

If you are looking for a different kind of study abroad experience that combines environmental studies, a cross-culture experience, the Middle East, kibbutz and desert living then the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies is the program for you. ...
Full Story

Jewish Identity

Useful Zionists

By Jeffry V. Mallow, Phd.

"Who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?"

Chico Marx in "Duck Soup"

... Helping to clarify between rhetoric and truths when it comes to "loving criticism"...
Full Story

Peoplehood and Return

By Rabbi David Gedzelman

The intensity of an immersion experience, whether it be Birthright Israel, summer camp, a service trip, or a retreat, is difficult to maintain or replicate in any kind of follow-up or continuing programming. ...
Full Story

Aharon David Gordon on Ecology and Love of Eretz Yisrael

By Rabbi Dr. Einat Ramon

One of the modern Jewish thinkers whose philosophy may shed light on the connection between People and Land in the wake of Zionism, for us who live in Israel, is Aharon David Gordon, a founder of the Labor Movement and a giant of the Second Aliya (18...
Full Story

Book Talk

Wake Up and Smell the Planet

What Do We Do Now? An Oscar for "An Inconvenient Truth" and a Nobel Prize are testament to Al Gore's achievements in increasing our knowledge about the threat of human-driven climate change. But most viewers did not notice the bits of advice flashing across the screen as the lights came on and the movie's closing credits were rolling. Rather, they were more likely to have looked at one another and asked "What do we do now?" Daniel Orenstein a friend of Ameinu reviews three self-help books that promise to help us make the transition to a cleaner, greener lifestyle. Full Review