President Barack Obama gave what even he described as a “Bar Mitzvah speech” at the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ) Biennial on Friday afternoon. Love him or hate him, the President gave an impressive speech that earned him no less than 70 rounds of applause. In the speech, he not only defended his administration’s record…
Israel’s Ministry of Immigration and Absorption might have taken a hit following its ill conceived PR campaign to get Israeli expats to return to Israel, but Tel Aviv is doing great right now in the PR department. Tel Aviv was on everyone’s mind yesterday as news circulated about a planned Red Hot Chili Peppers concert…
Just as I was about to sit down and blog about Israel’s recent controversial ad campaign that (not-so-subtly) cautions Israelis living in the U.S. to not marry Americans, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has decided to scrap the campaign. News of the ad campaign was first broken by the Jewish Channel but it went viral…
When I blogged about Larry David’s brilliant “Palestinian Chicken” episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, I focused on the role that the yarmulke played in that episode and didn’t really get into the meatier (get it?) issue that chicken can potentially play in Israeli-Palestinian relations. I figured someone would find value in that comical episode and try…
I try to keep up with the current events of the worldwide Jewish community. I read all of the major Jewish newspapers (or at least their websites). Therefore, I knew when Rabbi Natan Tzvi Finkel died on November 8 in Jerusalem. And yet, I admit I had never heard of him before. Rabbi Finkel was…
Two of my friends have recently announced they will be leaving Detroit. Both for better jobs elsewhere — in bigger, more desirable cities. One is originally from suburban Detroit and one is a transplant from the East Coast. One is a single, gay, observant Jewish man who seemed to have singlehandedly changed the narrative about…
This is my recent “Jews in the Digital Age” column for the Detroit Jewish News: Sally Whittle is a blogger in Lancashire, England. Her blog “Who’s the Mummy?” is one of approximately 4 million “mommy blogs” on the Web. Like many other young mothers she journals about her life as a mother and provides advice…
At the end of September following the release of the American hikers who were being held by Iran, reports came out that one of the hikers was Jewish. While the whole world knew that Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer were taken prisoner in Iran and accused of espionage, what most people didn’t know was that Josh…
I’ve been paying close attention to Gilad Shalit’s first days of freedom from captivity. The debate of whether the prisoner swap was the right choice rages on throughout Israel and beyond, but I’ve become more interested in how he adapts to freedom and how he responds to his new status as a celebrity. Perhaps what…
Aside from writing about the impact the announcement of the Gilad Shalit-Palestinian prisoners exchange deal had on Twitter last week for the Jewish Techs blog, I haven’t written much about this developing story. There are two reasons for this. First, I feel as though it’s all been said. Second, it’s a very complex moral dilemma. I posted…