Israeli Society

Education Minister Yuli Tamir became an unlikely haredi hero recently when she defended the Knesset vote to anchor in law funding of yeshivot ketanot .

Only in this country could forecasts of an impending lack of water to drink not even merit front-page headlines. And that is part of the problem. Our media, like our politicians, suffer from severe attention deficit disorder.

What does – or should – pain religious Jews is that other Jews feel no connection to the performance of mitzvot, not that they are witness to that fact.

Poverty is exacting a terrible toll on the Israeli chareidi community.

The Maccabbees' victory was only possible because they saw themselves as the righteous ones battling evildoers, those learning Torah combating those who willfully defiled His image.

Walt/Mearsheimer blame the American-Israeli alliance for the terrorist threat to America

The historic bargain linking American Jewry and Israel since the founding of the State is coming to an end.

But we have lost the ability to either laugh or cry. We just don't care.

BUT FOSTERING public debate and transparency is not how most Israeli journalists view their role. Rather, they see their task as making sure that the public reaches the proper conclusions.

The country can no longer afford a political class incapable of putting aside its personal political advantage, even at moments of ultimate danger.

The proposed constitution of the Institute for Zionist Strategies reflects the fundamental compromise between the desire to preserve something of the Jewish character of the State, on the one hand, and the desire to command wide support, on the other.

A society which still recognizes a collective identity larger than the individual is still one step closer to finding its way back to Hashem.

Against this homogenizing trend and post-national Europe, stands Israel and its claim to be both a democratic and Jewish national state.

The recognition by secular Israelis like Shavit that we cannot escape our fate as Jews – i.e., we will never be normalized -- offers hope for Israel’s future.

Ever since last summer's war in Lebanon, Israeli society has been engaged in a process of soul-searching unlike anything seen since the Yom Kippur War.

Israeli Society under the Microscope

Israel requires as well a leader who can articulate why it is important that we prevail; and why doing so would be, if not the "finest hour" of a very ancient people, at least one of the finest.

The Ayelet HaShachar organization has been in contact with 2,800 secular women who want to learn Torah half an hour a week over the phone.

The charge of political spin can be leveled at Olmert’s “last chance” speech delivered at the grave of Israel’s first prime minister David Ben-Gurion last week.

The print and electronic media conspire to convince the public that sexual relations are at once the be-all and end-all of life and no more significant than any other physical act, such as brushing one's teeth.

How we combat the threat of annihilation inherent in next month’s “celebration of deviancy” in Jerusalem remains for the gedolei Torah to decide. But all of us must be very clear as to the magnitude of the danger.

Clear proof of the transformative effect of a Torah-based education on secular Israeli kids is now at hand.

The mainstream press' biases have taken their toll on the quality of Israeli democracy.

What do the elections reveal?

Yesterday’s Israeli elections clarified some matters, but left a great deal more uncertain.

The proliferation of genetic testing and easy acceptance of abortion of non-perfect infants in Israel has been accompanied by no significant public ethical debate. It’s about time that one took place.

In a ruling last week the Israeli Supreme Court reaffirmed a a crucial aspect of its free speech jurisprudence: free speech protection for Arab citizens is absolute; only Jews may ever be found guilty of crimes involving speech.

Tragically, the battles to come in Yesha may not only diminish the influence of the national religious community, but threaten its internal strength as well.

Yet there is a silver lining to Hamas’ victory. It clarifies Israel’s situation to both ourselves and the world community.

The self-destruction of Shinui signals a widespread recognition that Israel cannot afford to destroy its sources of self-identity and strength.

Life after Sharon

Peretz’s economic prescriptions would be ruinous to the Israeli economy; nor would their overall impact on the chareidi community be salutary.

Only a reinvigorated Jewish identity can provide the internal unity, attachment to Land, and national morale necessary to confront a future in which Israel will continue to confront neighbors bent on its destruction.

That is why I am personally so grateful to the Tolne Rebbe not only for addressing so incisively a number of crucial issues, but no less so for showing us how we might learn from those of differing views rather than simply dismissing them out of hand.

Each year we are returned to the period immediately after the assassination in which no religious Jew was immune to taunts of "murderer."

November 5 has become an annual club to bash a large segment of the Israeli population, which until today stands accused of complicity in Rabin's assassination.

hundreds of thousands of Israelis living abroad have demonstrated, it is still possible to speak Hebrew in New York, Los Angeles and Miami. And if one's children do not, . . . a tragedy as to justify the eternally vigilant existence that is Israel's fate?

A number of the new Education Ministry reforms are designed to reduce the general air of anything goes. Students are to stand when their teachers enter the room, and dress codes have been instituted for students and teachers.

Even free speech absolutists will not deny that unfettered speech can be lethal.

Talk of the “chareidization” of the national religious world in the wake of the Gaza withdrawal is much in the air.

Defending Tommy

THE NON-DEBATE over the Gaza withdrawal mirrors our national conversation habits. The various tribes of Israel prefer pointing out the failures of other communities to confronting their own internal problems.

The outcome of the struggle currently taking place at Machon Lev will have consequences for virtually every segment of Israeli religious society. Machon Lev stands as an all too rare example of the unifying power of the Torah.

The sense of being G-d’s chosen is stronger in America than it is among G-d’s true chosen people

The celebration of intermarriage is, of course, the denial of any purpose to Jewish national survival. For if the Jewish people do not have any mission, what sense is there in preserving Jewish national identity through endogamy?

The Education Ministry policy constitutes a massive disincentive to making aliyah to thousands of graduates of Yeshiva University.

No technology is so invasive as the cellphone. Its small size and mobility provide the user with complete privacy and the ability to access any material he wants without fear of being found out by either teachers or friends.

Each year an estimated 50,000 or more potential Jewish lives are aborted.

The most persistent stereotype of haredim is that they could not care less about any Jew outside their narrow community. Yet that stereotype is easily refuted by evidence known to most secular Israeli.

The new SHUVU school in Kfar Saba demonstrates that secular Israelis are interested in a school in which children can study in a violence free environment while learning to talk with respect to their parents and becoming more familiar with their Judaism.

The lack of discipline and an environment conducive to learning in the secular system have opened many secular parents to considering the option of a Torah education

Soccer on Rosh Hashanah is one more cut in the ties that bind us to our past and thus offer us hope for our future.

One of the best educational systems in the world has been transformed into one where teachers who describe themselves as zookeepers and school violence has made learning impossible.

Sheva Brochos in Ein Harod

Lust Does Not Beget Love

Where the current negotiations will end up no one knows. But one thing is clear: Our leaders are faced with monumental choices involving the weighing of a large number of complex factors.

For the tens of millions of devout Christians, who are America’s most ardent supporters of Israel, and who wield great influence in the Republican party, the more Jewish Israel is, the greater their support for Israel.

Once again the Court has set itself up as the arbiter of the moral values, or lack thereof, of our society. It is ill-suited for that role.

I dwell at length on my friend because she exemplifies for me what is best and most hopeful in Israeli society. As long as Jews can talk to one another, and care for each other as brothers, everything is possible.

For the tens of millions of devout Christians, who are America’s most ardent supporters of Israel, the more Jewish Israel is, and the more modern Israelis are identified with the Jews of the Bible, the greater their support for Israel.

There is something terrifying about seeing a man cast down suddenly from the heights to the pit.

Rabbi Yaakov Rushnevsky, a veteran mechanech (educator), has devoted himself to addressing the sense of failure experienced by far too many of our children in school.

We owe a debt of gratitude to Meni Mazuz for reminding us that in a democracy the legal system is supposed to enforce legal norms enacted by the Knesset and leave for irate voters the enforcement of a higher morality on public officials

Mazuz deserves our gratitude for reminding us that in a democracy the role of the legal system is to enforce norms enacted by the Knesset, and to leave the rest to irate voters.

Court President Aharon Barak acknowledged the repugnance that Jews have always shown toward the consumption of pork.But he recognizes no legitimate reason for a democratically elected municipal council to ban the sale of pork from the public square.

Even as Lapid showed more empathy for Palestinian grandmothers than for the Jewish victims of Katyushas smuggled into Gaza via Rafah his fellow Shinui Knesset members were demonstrating more concern for Israeli pets than for Jewish children.

About the government’s recent decision to adopt Interior Minister Avraham Poraz’s proposal to make daylight savings time year around and to double it during the summer months. No country in the world does so. But as always we know better.

The shoving of shoddy goods like Arbel down the throat of the Israeli public has done more to undermine the credibility of the Supreme Court than a hundred critics ever could.

IF TUMARKIN REPRESENTS the worst in Israeli society, Rabbi Yitzchok David Grossman, this year’s Israel Prize winner for life achievement, represents the best.

Perhaps teaching Israeli students a bit of Talmud should take precedence over Arabic.

Hatred of chareidim is one more expression of the lack of self-identity and self-loathing.

An Israel prize for Jew hatred?

One suspects that had Tumarkin’s primary offenses been against any group other than religious Jews, even the Israel Prize committee would have recognized that he is unworthy of emulation and honor by the State of Israel.

Figures who have made careers of gratuitously insulting religious Jews and expressing their disdain for the Jewish religion in the most egregious fashion possible are fit recipients of the Israel Prize.

The moral dilemmas faced by the Prime Minister and the cabinet involving the redemption of captives, pidyon shvu’im, have been, unfortunately, recurrent ones throughout Jewish history, generating a vast halachic literature.

Rubinstein’s J’accuse

A Jew among enemies

No society based on denying man’s spiritual/ethical side, however, has long survived

Nothing undermines the public trust democracy requires faster than the feeling that the playing field is uneven and one side gets to make all the rules.

A surprising school survey

Why does the Israeli government insist on maintaining a monopoly over radio news?

Observing the manner in which the haredi community comes to grips with tragedy, secular Israelis learned more about the lives of haredi Jews than they had ever known.

The justified sympathy for society’s unfortunates should not lead us to constitutional aberrations.

The large attention that Vicky Knafo and her friends are attracting, proves that the high level of media concentration allows a small clique to control the national agenda.

Not a passing phenomenon

Nir can't read or do math

Dialogue can help

Some clues as to how the overall performance of Israeli Jewish students could be improved might be garnered from the success of SHUVU, a network of independent religious schools for children from Russian-speaking homes.

Lupolianski's challenge

The counting of the Omer and Israel today

Despite the mutual interest of both the general Israeli society and the haredi community in increased haredi economic participation, such participation is by no means a given

The exploitation of hatred of haredim has long been a staple of Israel elections. Now Levi’s exploits disgust with haredim to sell jeans.

The incitement double-standard

Shinui’s Trojan Horse

Haredi politicians have extorted every available shekel in the country, they don’t work, they pay no taxes, and they produce nothing. So goes the charge sheet. Yet each one of these claims is a gross distortion.

For Ilan Ramon: Why we cry more

Even if a secular coalition including Shinui does not materialize, Shinui's impact will continue to be felt

Tommy Lapid has provided us with a chilling snapshot of our national psyche

Shinui's popularity, especially among the educated young, reflect the degree to which our young are cut off from any sense of themselves as Jews.

Unsavory Choices

A hatred that cuts one way

Something rotten in the State of Israel

Dangerous Winds A'blowin

If elections were held today nearly 20% of the voters would vote for parties with anti-chareidi platforms

The power of an idea

The current expression given to Israelis' search for spirituality are more likely to lead away from G-d than to Him

The Israel Broadcasting Authority, aided and abetted by the Supreme Court, has ruled that ads promoting the recitation of Psalms are unfit to be heard.

Planned SHUVU school in Holon is the latest battleground in the battle against religious institutions opening in mixed neighborhoods

Why Chareidim will vote no to the Shabbat law

Who is being selfish

Why Charedim can't vote for the Shabbos law

Why neither the virulently anti-religious nor the religious will support the Shabbos law

Why Israel needs a two day weekend

In Israel, everything is judged on a basis of whose ox is gored

There is much confusion whether Kohanim are breaking religious law flying from Israel

a portrait of Rav Shach

Ze'evi was a unique person in separation of the political and personal and in his love for the people and land of Israel

The furor over the religious-Zionists' reaction to mixed combat units has taught them some harsh lessons

The integration of women into combat units need to be re-examined

Jerusalem's Bambi

Another Ticking Time Bomb

EU allocations to move Israeli opinion to the left; Tzvia Greenfield's attempts to discredit Judaism

Many of the non-Jewish Russian immigrants do not support Israel or the Jews

To say that mixed dancing caused the Versailles tragedy is idiotic

On the media coverage of the hevra kadisha following the Dolphinarium bombing

The consequences of separating sex from love.

Those who place all their hopes in Oslo are now suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder

Hazony critics recant but nobody notices

Sharon proves that there is no substitute for experience as he assumes his leadership position

By focusing all its energies on security, Israel has fallen behind in many other areas

Comparison of reaction to Taliban destruction of Buddhas and Waqf destruction of Temple Mount

Barak's arrogance has destroyed him

The failure to address crucial national needs betokens a fixation with the present adn loss of optimism about the future. Re: water crisis

Sharon's election as Prime Minister signals a national awakening to the importance of national identity and national will

Watershed Election?

Both Barak and Sharon are more concerned with personal good than with nation's needs

Clinton's friendship was a disaster for Israel

Was Clinton really Israel's best friend?

"Israelis" view Jewish nationalism as the root of all evil

Barak continues to pursue 'peace' even though it's obvious that he's endangering Israel

Both leaders, by avoiding the competition, detract from their legitimacy

Barak's resignation to prevent Netanyahu's return to politics causes Israeli public to have little confidence in its leaders

The good guys win

Criticism of A World of Changes - new textbook that was rejected by the Knesset Education Committee

Intelligence and wisdom do not always go hand in hand

Contempt of democracy from the left continues to tear the country apart

Comparisons between the Oslo process and the rise and fall of Shabtai Zvi

Reports of national consensus on the Shabbat issue

Shabbos as viewed by non religious Israelis

Shuvu's battle in Yerucham

The lack of purpose in their lives causes Israeli teens apathy and unhappiness

Why Peres lost the election

the Arabs despise the Israelis, who have consciously severed their historical ties to the land

Israel's crisis of spirit

Awarding the Israel Prize to Shulamit Aloni illustrates Israel's regard for the rule of respecting everyone except the Jews

Another look at haredim and army service

The media runs little risk in staging scenarios to discredit the religious or the Right

Awarding of the Israel Prize to Shulamit Aloni

No grinch here

Giving away the Golan lessens our chances of maintaining whatever peace we currently have

The non-Jewish Russian immigration destroys Israel's identity as a Jewish country

Transporting the turbine on Shabbat broadcasts the message that Israel has no regard at all for Halacha

Just what was sacrificed by transporting the turbine on Shabbat

Many life-and-death decisions must be made with imperfect knowledge. But it's crucial not to focus on only one side of the equation.

Israel's attempt to confine haredim to separate enclaves

Israeli candidates run with no platforms or policies

Sharansky resists short-term political gain in favor of unity

Intellectual discussion in Israel today is dominated by the unwillingness to concede to the veracity of one's opponent

Protests against the haredi school in Tzoran

Is he really such a champion of free speech?

Why haredim don't serve in the IDF

The Rabin assassination in the context of the Zionist history of murder

The messianism of the Israeli Left

The immigration of Russian non-Jews is destroying the Jewishness of Israel

Israel is importing Russian immigrants to counteract haredi growth

The bias of the Israel Broadcasting Authority

On Dana International and the moral degeneration of Israeli society

Long after memory of the fraudulent story of the raped haredi woman has faded, the impression of the cruel Halacha will remain

On 30 people eager to prohibit brit milah

Weizmann's unsuitability for the role of president

On Israel's religious oppression of Sephardic immigrants

On unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon

Meretz's attacks on free speec