Batya Brownstein

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Apr 25, 2023, 3:11 PM

On raising our kids in a warzone- Yom Hazikaron ponderings

Yom Hazikaron, 2023. Eli’an is six this year. It’s the first time I’ve had to handle the questions I feared for so long. Not her questions – mine. HOW do we raise children here? How do we raise them to be kind,...

Sep 13, 2022, 2:01 PM

LGBT rights vs. parental rights in today’s Israel

In recent days, a story has broken about a child attending a religious public school in Givat Shmuel who was placed in his class without the knowledge of other parents. Opinions and accusations were fired in short order, along all...

Nov 10, 2020, 8:42 PM

Opinion: Austrian citizenship for returning Jews is unintentionally anti- Semitic

Willing victims of a wanderlust culture (a categorization in which I include myself), Israelis have begun in recent years to accumulate international citizenships in order to avoid the bureaucracy of visas and the like, as well as to provide...

Apr 26, 2020, 12:07 AM

The crisis of Corona-era private daycares

In these challenging times, public discourse has been very centered on finding ways to lighten the economic burdens of as many people as possible. Yet, in a society trained to think of private and semi- private daycare as a...

Jan 24, 2020, 9:59 PM

Naama Issachar — a story of bad decisions and consequences

First, the evil choice of a Russian dictator whose legacy is the preservation of the authoritarian oppression of his people, but without the ideology. This man saw an opportunity to leverage a friendly country and seized it many times...

Dec 6, 2019, 1:32 PM

I got divorced at the Rabbanut

Illustrative. A woman drops her wedding ring, divorce. (iStock)

I was told: 'It’s not fair and it’s horrible, but this is not the time to make a statement.' So here is my statement (it's not what I thought it would be)

Jul 21, 2019, 12:38 PM

Why Government Intervention Will Not Make Israel Green

Lately, various petitions have been circulating on social media with the goal of making plastic tableware illegal in Israel. The problem with that is that this legislative approach fails to address the real underlying problems. More so than the...

May 1, 2019, 7:51 PM

Let’s stop misusing the word “Nazi”, it’s disrespectful

On the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel, I had some thoughts about the way the word “Nazi” is used. “Nazi” is a historical term, a word that has a very specific definition: a member of the National...

Oct 28, 2018, 11:52 AM

Stop Politicizing Jewish Deaths

It’s been a while since I’ve felt strongly enough about an event to write about it, partly due to the fact that sanity, inspiration and unity have been sent to the land where the obsolete goes to die. And...

Nov 24, 2017, 12:48 AM

Tzipi Hotovely prefers the truth to pandering

Tzipi Hotovely in the Knesset, July 7, 2014 (Hadas Parush/Flash90)

Being a Jew in the Diaspora does not equal being an Israeli citizen

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About Me

Born to a French mother and American father, Batya came to Israel at a young age. Upon graduating high school in Israel, she spent her military service in the IDF's Foreign Press Branch. She now studies International Relations and Political Science (B.A.) at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and lives in Jerusalem with her beautiful daughter.