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Benji Lovitt

Benji Lovitt

The Idiot’s Guide to Ulpan

Some highly-motivated students insist on speaking Hebrew and only Hebrew. Those are the ones we don't like

The Israeli flag flutters in front of the Old City of Jerusalem's Dome of the Rock on December 1, 2017. (AFP Photo/Thomas)

Is it time to do away with Tisha B’Av?

Israel has evolved into an economic and military superpower; what must we mourn?

David Ben-Gurion, flanked by the members of his provisional government, reads the Declaration of Independence in the Tel Aviv Museum Hall on May 14, 1948 (Israel Government Press Office)

Naomi Chazan

Israel doesn't need a nation-state bill

20% of Israel's population is not Jewish, and the democracy of the Declaration of Independence includes them

Illustrative. Watermelon. (PublicDomainImages)

Jason Fredric Gilbert

The Watermelon War

The battle between married couples everywhere: who will pick a sweet, delicious watermelon and who will choose a dud?

Romi Sussman

When summer travel is more than vacation

Why my children carried their Israeli flags around the world, and what they learned

An inscription reading 'They were flammable' and a Nazi swastika are seen in Jedwabne, Poland, September 1, 2011, on the monument dedicated to Jews from the town of Jedwabne burned to death by their Polish neighbors in 1941. (AP/Michal Kosc/File)

Jack Schwartz

Poland’s narrative amounts to Holocaust denial

It was the Poles who held the Jews on the scaffold, while the Nazis tightened the noose

Model of Herod's Jerusalem Temple © Shmuel Browns

Reuven Bobby Weinmann

Hating the sinner

Was the Temple destroyed because the Jews hated their obvious adversaries, instead of righteously loving them as themselves?

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Jul 17, 2018, 7:11 AM

My Hero, Hermann Maas

Probably none of my readers are familiar with the name Hermann Maas. But in 1952, having read about him, he immediately became one of my most respected heroes. He was born in Germany in 1877 and received his Doctor of...

Jul 17, 2018, 7:09 AM

The humiliation clause and the status of Arabic

The nation-state bill is due to come before the Knesset this week for its final readings. If it passes into law, one of Israel’s longest-standing linguistic traditions will be changed -- the official status of Arabic will be revoked,...

Jul 17, 2018, 7:08 AM

“And Israel?” writes Paul Berman on Tablet -- almost as an afterthought -- toward the end of an essay lauding the primary election of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Contrast this with an essay in The Times of Israel last week by...

Moshe-Mordechai van Zuiden

Jul 16, 2018, 11:34 PM

G-d’s earthquakes? Fault the faulty, not the fault line

Many people are quick to credit Nature with birth but G^d with death. When an earthquake in China killed scores of schoolchildren, many questioned G^d's Goodness, and few blamed it on callousness of architects and builders who for sheer profit...

Avidan Freedman

Jul 16, 2018, 11:14 PM

Why not to fast on Tisha B’Av

You can set your calendar by it. You know the 9th of Av is around the corner when essays start surfacing questioning the relevance of mourning for the Temple's destruction in our time. How can we fast and weep...

Olivier Jack Melnick

Jul 16, 2018, 9:42 PM

Haman, Hitler and BDS: We should know better!

What do the book of Esther, the Nuremberg Laws of 1933 and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement have in common? A lot more than meets the eye! There is a theme found in Esther about Haman’s disdain...

Nesanel Yoel Safran

Jul 16, 2018, 9:31 PM

I used to be Jewish

When I was Jewish -- call me "Jew" and I shrink. Now I’m a Jew -- I do not even blink. When I was Jew-ish – an irrelevant birth fact. Now I’m a Jew – an essential soul pact. When I was Jew-ish...

Raymond M. Berger

Jul 16, 2018, 8:56 PM

Saving Little Girls

Even proponents of cultural relativity realize in their heart of hearts that some cultures are better than others. You are walking down the street when suddenly you hear the screams of a child coming from inside a house. Troubled and curious,...

Barbara Diamond

Jul 16, 2018, 8:43 PM

The FIFA final 2018 — A life lesson learned

For two years in a row, I have found myself in the South of France for Bastille Day. That was yesterday. Today was the FIFA football final match between Croatia and France and my reaction to the event --...

Jul 16, 2018, 6:33 PM

Michael Jackson’s ‘Blood on the Dance Floor,’ 21 Years Later

Some years ago, while I was doing a research for my upcoming biography on Michael Jackson, I did an interview with Jackson’s old associate, director and choreographer Vincent Paterson. In early 1997, Jackson asked Paterson to work with him...

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