Rachel Cowan first came to Israel in the mid-1960’s with her then-new husband, the journalist Paul Cowan. She was not Jewish at the time. She and Paul were freshly acquainted with the harsh reality of the American South, where they were volunteering then. And as they toured and volunteered in Israel, they witnessed the poverty…
The Jewish world is in an uproar over Julia Salazar, a candidate for state senate. Salazar portrayed herself in multiple interviews as a Jew of Color, claims that a recent exposé called into doubt. The article split the Jewish community in two. Salazar’s detractors called her a Jewish Rachel Dolezal, a reference to the woman…
In their response to my recent piece, “The Loneliness of the Liberal Zionist,” Harry Reis and Yoav Schaefer have argued that Israel bears responsibility for the decline (if not death) of liberal Zionism as a viable future path for the Jewish state. Because of five decades of occupation, unremitting settlement expansion beyond the Green Line,…
The American Jewish Committee’s recent survey has already sparked considerable debate over the future of the Jewish people — indeed, whether there even is a single Jewish people. Most concerning to many is the finding that American Jews and Israeli Jews have diverged to the point that while a majority of both groups see the…
This past week, the Trump administration inaugurated one of its signature foreign policy accomplishments: the official relocation of the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. It was a striking moment, with the celebration coinciding with the killing of scores of protestors in Gaza. The embassy move and the withdrawal from the Iran Deal were…
In the span of less than a week, President Donald Trump will have upended American foreign policy in the Middle East and delivered to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu everything he’s ever wanted from a White House. By announcing last Tuesday that he is shredding the Iran nuclear deal, and by unilaterally moving the American…
Ever since the late 1960s, Israel has been a defining feature of American Jewish identity. But for the first time in fifty years, this is changing. Wedge issues have been alienating liberal Jews from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hawkish, pro-Orthodox, pro-settlement platform, issues like prayer accommodations for Reform and Conservative Jews at the Western Wall…
Rev. William J. Barber II, a black minister and one of the country’s foremost progressive organizers, addressed a huge audience of Reform Jews on the opening night of the denomination’s biennial gathering — where he called on the Reform movement to join him in his newly-launched campaign to fight poverty. For many, Barber’s speech at…
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