Jewish Identity Perspectives

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" › More Info

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. › More Info

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 (1856-1922). › More Info

Joy and Jeopardy

By Sharon Brous

Our tradition teaches that we remain enslaved as long as slavery and affliction persist in our world. › More Info

A Progressive Zionist Vidui/Confession for 5768

By Rabbis for Human Rights Israel

For the sin which we have sinned against You when we said that Tikkun Olam is beyond our capability. › More Info

What is Zionism? A Progressive Vision (Abridged)

By

There is no contradiction between Israel as a democratic Jewish state and as a state of its citizens. › More Info

PRAYER FOR THE PEOPLE AND THE STATE OF ISRAEL

By Rabbi Leila Gal Berner

Source of Life and Guide toward Peace:
bless the people and the State of Israel,
the first flowering of our redemption.

Shield the Land with Your love,
and spread over it Your shelter of peace.
Send Your light and Your truth to its leaders and advisors,
and help them with Your good counsel.
Strengthen the hands of those who defend this sacred Land,
and the hands of those who seek peace and pursue it.
Grant them courage and resolve and hope,
and crown their efforts with success.

Grant harmony and tranquility in the Land,
and open the hearts of all, so that bloodshed
and violence
and the slaughter of innocents
may cease.

Bring peace, that elusive gift to the Land
and all its inhabitants
and bring too, O God,
everlasting joy to all who dwell on the Land.

May the children of Abraham, Sarah and Hagar,
the descendants of Ishmael and Isaac,
come to live together in harmony and well-being,
each people fulfilling its dream of "home."

May shalom, salaam, come soon.
Do not delay, O God.
We need You.
We await You with wounded hearts
and hopeful souls.

To this, we all say: amen. › More Info

A Tragedy Foretold: Israel’s Unheeded Prophet

By

It took forty years of wandering in the desert of ignorance for today’s Jewish people to learn the truth about Israel in the Promised Land. › More Info

1967-2007: Israel's Options Under Darkening Clouds of Islamic Jihad over the Middle East

By Gilead Sher

Former Israeli Prime Minister Barak's chief negotiator offers a synopsis of the dangers and dilemmas facing Israel, and how it should confront them. › More Info

What If Israel Had Turned Back?

By Tom Segev

Israeli planners determined six months before the Six-Day War that capturing the West Bank would be bad for the country. › More Info

Judaism’s Green Roots

By Daniel Orenstein

Environmentalism and Judaism share a common vision. › More Info

Lessons of the Lebanon War: Teaching Humility During a Summer of Raw Emotion--A Rabbinic Perspective

By Leonard Gordon

This was not the moment for sticking to our long-held positions and repeating our “truths”. New thinking is needed. › More Info

The Far Left’s Discomfort with Jewish Identity

By Dan Fleshler

How dare American Jews be “self-contratulatory” or have any ethnic pride of any kind?! › More Info

RATIONALE FOR ESTABLISHING A SECULAR YESHIVA IN TEL AVIV

By Tal Shaked

"Torah Lishma" - Jewish study for the sake of study - was part an inseparable part of Jewish culture and life since the time of the Mishnah, over 2,000 years ago. › More Info

Two New Year's III

By Amnon Hadary

On too many Rosh Hashanah visits to the synagogue of my choice I had chafed at having to go through it on two days as though the first was a dress rehearsal. Who besides God needs so much adulation? I finally figured out that the reason for the annual encore is to goad worshippers to consider what and why they are doing something twice. To paraphrase Socrates: the unexamined ceremony is not worth celebrating. And this in turn has led me to ask myself: how many New Year celebrations do a people need? You would think that one would be enough and that two are a bit of a muchness. Still, inured to deprivation and want, Jews tend to take a spare – just in case. So we have two Rosh Hashanah celebrations dividing the year evenly. The second one is called Pesach and I claim that if anything it is the real one, because it is redolent of history and geography, both; our beginnings as an individuated people and the growing season in Israel.
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EXCERPTS FROM “Our Pal, God” and Other Presumptions: A Book of Jewish Humor

There are many stories about the lack of arms and equipment that plagued the Jews during Israel’s War of Independence. One such tells of a new immigrant who volunteers for the just-born Israeli Navy. He signs up and requests a uniform.
“Sorry, we don’t have uniforms,” the recruiting officer tells him.
“How about a rifle or pistol?” asks the new recruit.
“Sorry, we don’t have any.”
As the recruit leaves the office, the enlistment officer stops him.
“I forgot to ask. Can you swim?”
“What!” exclaims the new recruit. “No boats either?”
› More Info

Feedback to American Jews on the Israeli Cultural Scene

By Steven Hancoff

I just returned to the USA after spending a month in Tel Aviv.

I am a guitarist. Since 1993, I have had the great good fortune to have visited about 55 countries and hundreds of cities around the world, mostly in what used to be called the ?Third World? ? now politically incorrect ? and now called, euphemistically, ?developing? countries. I say ?euphemistically? because they are usually not developing much ? rather, they are just, by and large, poor. I?ve been able to travel like this because I am invited to play concerts and teach master classes in these places. As a result of receiving invitations to various countries in the capacity of being an American artist, I get to meet artists and musicians internationally and be somewhat immersed in the art scenes of these countries. › More Info

Post Holocaust Zionism

By Carolyn Amacher

Perhaps it was a coping mechanism, but as a child I had an uncanny ability to segment the events in my young life. When my uncle?s store burned down, I did not make the connection that the Race Riots violently affecting my hometown of Washington, D.C. had reached my own family. I remember my mother retelling that the Blacks had apologized to my uncle, who was one of the first to hire Blacks in Washington.

The motorcycle and marijuana-smoking marauders always lingered outside my elementary school ? many the elder siblings of my childhood friends - but I did not connect them as Veterans of the Vietnam War. The Peace marchers who came over for dinner ? like the Quakers - were just that ? dinner guests ? not partners with my father in civil disobedience to desegregate our City. When my best friend moved away to Laos it was just another country ?way too far away ? not a home base for her father?s assignment with the Vietnam War, and when they fled, barely escaping with their lives, I figured it was just an isolated yet scary encounter.
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On Bar and Bat Mitzvahs

By Cary Sperling

As is well-known, lavish bar and bat mitzvah celebrations have become the norm in the lives of many American Jews. One Long Island entertainer recently told me that a well-produced event ? complete with casino games, video productions, DJs, troupes of dancers, and musicians?may cost more than $100,000. Providing testimony are not only the 151,000 pages in Google that offer contacts for every significant aspect of this event, but also a recent article in the New York Times Book Review of ?Thirteen and A Day?, a book about bar and bat mitzvahs. My curiosity about this relatively modern phenomenon was aroused at a recent low-key bar mitzvah I attended during which I was apprised of the extravaganzas that characterize most other such celebrations. › More Info

CABALS

By Jeffry V. Mallow, Phd.

Recently the Anti-Defamation League alerted the Palestinian Authority that the PA web site had a link to the ?Protocols of the Elders of Zion,? the notorious Czarist forgery used by anti-Semites everywhere to vilify Jews as a secret international cabal. The PA immediately removed the link. › More Info

Ehud Manor Z?L A Remarkable Israeli

By Amnon Hadary

By the time of his death at age 64, Ehud Manor and the thousand songs he wrote were clearly the embodiment of a beautiful Israel. › More Info

How Is This Seder Similar To All The Other Seders?

By Rabbi Dr. Einat Ramon

What makes the Seder such a unique and powerful educational and spiritual event is specifically its similarity to other Seders clebrated throughout Jewish history and throughout our own personal biography. This, I believe, is the secret of the Seder as both the most widespread and the most pluralistic fulfillment of a ritual mitzvah in the Jewish world today. › More Info

Are Democracy and Ideology Incompatible?

By Amnon Hadary

Once when Zionism was still just a movement with the goal of establishing a Jewish State in Palestine, democracy, ideology and politics were not mutually exclusive. Although this philosophy called for Jewish self-emancipation, Herzl was also › More Info

Kibbutz and Kotel Paradigms

By Amnon Hadary

Even on the shortest sightseeing tour to Israel, visits to the kotel and to a kibbutz are de rigueur. They are required because for all the cosmic differences between the two places, taken together they are paradigmatic of Israel. Have they now become › More Info

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