Anat Hoffman is the executive director of the Israel Religious Action Center, the legal and advocacy arm of the Reform Movement in Israel. Previously, she held a seat on the Jerusalem City Council for 14 years.
Anat Hoffman
By Anat Hoffman
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Community The far-right Noam Party poses a threat to the Israeli values that we hold dear
Billboards with the slogan “Israel Chooses to be Normal,” could be seen on the highway that runs through Tel Aviv during recent Israeli elections. These signs were sponsored by the extremist Noam Party. The billboards promoted a certain kind of “normalcy”—in particular, they wanted to “that my son marries a woman.” Noam’s campaign commercials added…
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Opinion With conversion decision, Israel moves one step closer to being genuinely inclusive
It is the rainy season in Israel, so I have been thinking about umbrellas. It is tempting to make a benign, even cozy, metaphor, imagining Israel as a protective force shielding us from threatening storms, and a means of uniting us as we huddle together to stay warm and dry. I wish I could give…
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Community Women Of The Wall Is Fighting For Ultra-Orthodox Women, Too
It is Rosh Chodesh Iyar, and over one hundred women have come prepared with Israeli flags and strong singing voices. After a last-minute deliberation, we made the decision to enter the dreaded metal “cage” (the barriers set up for Women of the Wall for the Western Wall Heritage Foundation and police, “quarantining” us on the…
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Community World Jewry Must Rise Above Its Own Inhibitions About ‘Interfering’ With Israeli Politics
I get the same sense of insolence from Israeli officials when the effects of the cancellation of the Kotel Agreement on World Jewry are discussed. “What will they do to us?” I was forced to spend 24 hours with a 5-year-old who isn’t family. I explained the rules of the house several times during his…
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Community Want ‘Official Israel’ To Respect You, Diaspora Jews? Here’s How To Make It Happen.
Israel boasts that it is the Jewish homeland. A home for all Jews. It declares solidarity and inclusion that in reality it fails to deliver. A perfect example of this gap was demonstrated in the Cabinet meeting on June 25, 2017. The topic of the meeting was Israel-Diaspora relations, and Natan Sharansky, chairman of the…
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Community Reflecting on Fathers and Kings
Of all prayers in the world, the rabbi of my congregation asked me to write something about Avinu Malkeinu — Our Father, Our King. This prayer, said three times on Yom Kippur has always been a challenge for me. I have a very complex history with so-called fathers and kings, and I’ve dedicated my adult…
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Opinion Our Western Wall Victory Is A Win For All Jewish Women Seeking To Pray
Thursday morning, my Women of the Wall (WOW) sisters and I gathered not at the Western Wall, but at another location in Jerusalem: the Supreme Court. We’d been waiting for this day for months, and it finally came. In June, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reneged on an agreement to create a space at the Western…
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Opinion What the Women of the Wall Want
One recent afternoon, while I was riding on a gender-segregated bus in Jerusalem, an Orthodox woman told me she didn’t mind sitting in back and out of sight, because it helped the men “keep cleanliness of the eyes.” Her reasoning was familiar to me; it followed a logic similar to the rationale behind a men-only…
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