Shlomit Ravitsky Tur-Paz, at The Blogs

Shlomit Ravitsky Tur-Paz

Jun 25, 2025, 3:21 PM

Was the Supreme Court’s conscription ruling real or just a dream?

Ultra-Orthodox Jews clash with police during a protest against the drafting of ultra-Orthodox Jews to the IDF, on road 4 near Bnei Brak, June 5, 2025. (Erik Marmor/Flash90)

A year ago, the Court told the state to follow its own laws on drafting Haredim. Since then, few notices were sent and compliance has been miniscule

Jan 25, 2024, 2:16 PM

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What South Africa gets wrong about the Jewish take on ‘Amalek’

The South African legal team sits during hearings in the International Court of Justice (ICJ), in the case South Africa v. Israel on January 11-12, 2024, at the Peace Palace in The Hague. (Courtesy, International Court of Justice)

If you want to build a case in The Hague that Israel is calling for genocide, then you should have better evidence than thousands of years of metaphor

Sep 28, 2023, 3:35 PM

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Tel Aviv’s Yom Kippur struggle could have been avoided

Jews pray while activists protest against gender segregation in the public space during a public prayer on Dizengoff Square in Tel Aviv, on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, and the holiest of Jewish holidays, September 25, 2023. (Itai Ron/Flash90)

Instead, it highlighted the harm this government is wreaking, not just on Israel's democracy, but on its Jewish character

Sep 12, 2022, 10:40 AM

A reimagined Zionism for the 21st century

The house I grew up in, in Jerusalem, was situated at the junction of three neighborhoods that represented a “Zionist triangle” of inspiration for modern-day Israel: The biblical patriarchs and matriarchs who birthed our nation, the warriors who defended...

Jun 3, 2022, 8:40 AM

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Ruth is the right model for Israel’s conversion rules

Ruth and Naomi, by Philip Hermogenes Calderon, 1886, Walker Art Gallery.

Israel's new plan allows each convert to choose an officiating rabbi and a community to join, just as Ruth's decision to join Naomi was a personal one

Apr 8, 2022, 12:46 PM

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The power to forget can make all the difference: Mamzerut

Nathan confronts King David for his adultery with Bathsheba, an affair that produced a mamzer (who soon dies). Bronze bas-relief on the door of La Madeleine, Paris. (Wikipedia, AP: Baron Henri de Triqueti)

Nowadays, people are largely judged on their merits - except when technology preserves an inherited 'illegitimate' status in ways Jewish law never anticipated

About Me

Adv. Shlomit Ravitsky Tur-Paz is the Israel Democracy Institute Director of the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Center for Shared Society and Head of its Religion and State Program.