By Joel Magalnick, Editor, The Jewish Sound As this 91-year experiment in community outreach comes to a close, I have a question: Can we talk? I mean, really talk? In particular, I want to talk about Israel, because it seems like nobody else is. When I mean talk about Israel,Continue Reading
(JTA) — The Seattle-area transit authority can refuse to post an advertisement criticizing Israeli policy as long as it is part of a viewpoint-neutral ban on the subject, according to a ruling by a U.S. federal appeals court. In a ruling issued March 18, a panel of judges from theContinue Reading
By Michal Lotzkar, Special to the Jewish Sound I went on a trip to Israel a few months ago. I had been to Israel many times before, and each time I travelled there by way of a different route. This time I traveled to Israel via Auschwitz, on the MarchContinue Reading
By Rita Berman Frischer, Special to The Jewish Sound The Hebrew people may have schlepped on foot for 40 years, but modern transportation has updated traveling to and through the Promised Land. Kar-Ben Publishing marks this year’s Festival of Freedom, Passover, by featuring “Engineer Ari” and his intrepid train asContinue Reading
TEL AVIV (JTA) — Exit polls in Israel showed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party neck and neck at the top with the center-left Zionist Union led by Isaac Herzog. The two parties had 27 seats each, according to the polls by the Channel 1 and Channel 10 television stations. ChannelContinue Reading
By Janis Siegel, Jewish Sound Correspondent Kenneth Stein has learned a few things about his students. The professor and history scholar from Atlanta’s Emory University, who spoke to a crowd of over 50 Seattleites at Hillel at the University of Washington, said that during his 37 years of teaching IsraelContinue Reading
By Hanna Rais, The Media Line In Afghanistan, dozens of men marched through the streets wearing head-to-toe sky-blue burkas to show their identification with restrictions against women. In Iran, women took to social media to “reclaim feminism.” At the West Bank Qalandia crossing, 1,000 Palestinian and 500 Israeli women triedContinue Reading
By Sarah Wildman, JTA World News Service WASHINGTON (JTA) — At the AIPAC conference, a sea of 16,000 Israel supporters spent their time talking Iran policy amid the swirling controversy over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress. To the sidelines fell discussion of the Israeli elections, the peace processContinue Reading
By Israel’s president, Reuven Rivlin A eulogy by President Rivlin at the funeral in Jerusalem for the victims of the attack on the kosher shop in Paris: Dear families, Yoav, Yohan, Philippe, Francois-Michel, this is not how we wanted to welcome you to Israel. This is not how we wantedContinue Reading
By Daniel S. Mariaschin, JTA World News Service WASHINGTON (JTA) — Before the HarperCollins Middle East atlas story is deleted from email inboxes, it pays to spend another moment ruminating on the damage caused by companies that ought to know better. On its website, HarperCollins bills itself as “one ofContinue Reading
By Samantha Badgen, The Media Line That terrorism causes psychological trauma is nothing new. Most would agree that causing trauma is one of terrorism’s primary goals. But now a study in Israel has found that exposure to even the threat of terrorism, not an actual terror attack, can have negativeContinue Reading
By Emily K. Alhadeff, Associate Editor, The Jewish Sound Fresh out of Israel and already scooping up a first place award at the Tribeca Film Festival is “Zero Motivation,” a darkly delightful girl-buddy comedy about the banality of daily life in Israel’s defining institution, the army. “M*A*S*H” meets “Orange is theContinue Reading
By Ben Sales, JTA World News Service JERUSALEM (JTA) – On the surface, the tour looked much like a standard Birthright Israel trip: Participants celebrated Shabbat in Jerusalem’s Old City, swam in the Dead Sea and ascended the ancient mountain fortress at Masada. The trip was mostly free and organizersContinue Reading
(JNS.org) Ahead of Americans’ nationwide feasting on Turkey for Thanksgiving last week, newly released statistics showed that Israel is the surprising world leader in consumption of turkey per capita. According to figures from Israel’s turkey industry, agriculture ministry, and foreign ministry, the average Israeli eats about 28 pounds ofContinue Reading
Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org Hezbollah has a stock of advanced sea-to-sea missiles with which it intends to impose a maritime siege on Israel if the two sides enter another war, Lebanese media outlets reported on Monday. According to the reports, Hezbollah apparently has an arsenal of sophisticated Russian-made Yakhont sea-to-seaContinue Reading
By Ben Cohen, JNS.org To properly understand how the Holocaust has been seared onto Israel’s collective consciousness, one should visit the country on the 27th of Nisan, a date in the Hebrew calendar that falls in either April or May in the solar one. On that day, Yom HaShoah,Continue Reading
By Jacob Kamaras, JNS.org Settlements or Jewish communities? West Bank or Judea and Samaria? East Jerusalem or eastern Jerusalem? Those are some of the language choices that journalists covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are faced with each day—and those choices should not be taken lightly, experts say. “It’s the terminologyContinue Reading
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israel and the Palestinians held secret back-channel peace negotiations, the New Republic reported. The secret negotiations created substantial progress toward an agreement but collapsed when it became clear the Palestinian negotiator did not have the backing of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, according to the article publishedContinue Reading
By Janis Siegel, Jewish Sound Correspondent Make no mistake: Dr. Einat Wilf is on the forefront of an intellectual war to recapture the global zeitgeist of her home country, Israel, and wrench it back from those who’ve hijacked its image by using political epithets as their weapons, looking to ultimatelyContinue Reading
By Uriel Heilman, JTA World News Service NEW YORK (JTA) – If they buy it, they will come. That’s the philosophy behind a new luxury apartment project in Israel called The Hamptons in Herzliya Pituach that’s attempting to link two very swanky locales in the service of strengthening Diaspora Jews’ connectionsContinue Reading
