(JTA) — Leaders of British and French Jews issued divergent statements about the controversy over egalitarian prayer at the Western Wall. In London, the president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Jonathan Arkush, recently condemned the decision of the Israeli government not to implement a plan to expand separate spaces for mixed prayer at the Western Wall. The…
On the morning of July 12, I read a piece in the Opinion Page of the New York Times titled “Israel to American Jews: You Just Don’t Matter” by Thomas L. Friedman. In this piece, Friedman states that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu has yielded to the whims of the Orthodox and has basically…
In his Forward column titled “Kotel Controversy Shows That U.S. Jewish Groups Don’t Represent The Orthodox,” Avi Shafran claims that the American Orthodox community has been treated like “chopped liver” in recent debates over the Western Wall and conversion law in Israel. While I acknowledge American Orthodox voices have been missing in the news coverage…
For the first time in recent memory, the mainstream Jewish community is outraged at the Israeli government. After reaching an agreement with Women of the Wall and the Reform and Conservative movements to establish a new egalitarian prayer space at the Western Wall, the government reneged on its promise and suspended its plan. At the…
Maybe the Israeli government’s decision to kill the Western Wall agreement should be viewed not as a humiliating slap in the face, but as an opportunity to redefine our goals as non-Orthodox Jews. Liberal American Jews, like myself, felt so hurt and angry that the Israeli government reneged on its promise to create an egalitarian…
What are we, chopped liver? The question, from my Orthodox corner of the American Jewish world, is born of the recent onslaught of outrage aimed at the Israeli government by representatives of “American Jewry.” The outrage itself, of course, was born of two things. The first was the Israeli Cabinet’s freezing of a resolution aimed…
U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman scolded American Jews for their outspoken reactions to the Israeli government’s recent decisions regarding the Western Wall and conversions, calling any wavering on support for Israel “unthinkable.” The envoy made the unusual comments in a speech during his first public remarks since taking office on May 16, according to…
One day in May 1935, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin welcomed French Foreign Minister Pierre Laval to Moscow to discuss the rising Nazi threat and France’s defensive plans. How many troops mobilized? Armored divisions? Artillery? At one point, historians say, Laval asked Stalin to ease his harsh treatment of Russian Catholics in order to ensure the…
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