InDepth

Of course, believing in God doesn’t make one Jewish. Many people identify themselves as Jews for a host of reasons other than believing in the God of Israel, and they are just as Jewish as the most pious Jew. Being Jewish is a birthright, not a belief right. According to halacha, anyone born of a Jewish mother is Jewish. Period.

We live in a world where a people returning to it’s ancestral home is accused of occupation, and redemption has become colonialism.

In mainstream America, people believe in instant romance and not physically keeping to oneself prior to marriage.

I have heard many Rabbis tell me that they don’t wish to dirty their hands by getting involved in political matters.

Does anyone think the Palestinian Authority will resist daily attacks from Hamas and Fatah radicals?

“Arise, Reb Yechiel—honored with the firing of one bomb!”

Obama is bored and so are we.

Larger and larger swaths of people in the West keep coming back with the wrong opinion.

Secret Service security arrangements were overruled.

I was touched by his words on the struggle to stand up for Israel.

A key component of the Geneva Accords between the 5+1 and Tehran is limiting the latter' striking range to Middle Eastern targets.

Shortly before the afternoon service began, the lights and heat went on in the synagogue.

The birth of the Palestinian refugee phenomenon, in the form of a massive Arab flight, occurred during the Arab riots of 1936-39.

The Obama Administration plan is very simple, assuming that everything goes smoothly–which of course it will not.

You don't see my kind of loss in America as much as you do here, in Israel.

Gideon Levy ignores the fact that Germany, Switzerland, the U.K. and the U.S. were by far the biggest traders with the apartheid regime, choosing instead to focus on Israel.

The more severe scenario of a nuclear Iran is that the Iranians will not even need to go to war.

For states, as for individuals, fear and reality go together naturally.

I first met Mandela in Geneva in 1990 as part of a delegation of American Jewish leaders.

How much wealth exists in the American Orthodox community?

They didn’t have to ask twice – I was there.

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Despite the interim agreement between Iran and several world powers, which provides for a softening of sanctions in return for a curtailment of elements of the Iranian nuclear development program, many members of Congress have resisted calls from the White House to defer legislation that would impose increased sanctions on Iran should a satisfactory final agreement not be reached or the Iranians fail to adhere to the temporary deal.

The Jewish Press raised some eyebrows with its endorsement of Bill de Blasio in the New York City mayoral election. After all, the editorial positions we’ve taken over the years are not particularly compatible with Mr. de Blasio’s liberal track record.

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Filling two vacuums at once – one of Orthodox women taking a more public role and a second of Modern Orthodox Jews demonstrating the merits of religious Jewish practice – Allison Josephs has transformed her sweet and engaging webisodes and blog into a larger force. Jew in the City is now a franchise.

Yossi Klein Halevi’s Like Dreamers (Harper) explores the lives of seven Israeli paratroopers in the Six-Day War who, his subtitle suggests, “Reunited Jerusalem and Divided a Nation.” It offers a fascinating variation on the theme of Israel at a fateful crossroads, in search of itself, following the wondrously unifying moment at the Western Wall in June 1967 when Jewish national sovereignty in Jerusalem was restored for the first time in nineteen centuries.

Only 26 years ago, 250,000 Jews demonstrated on the National Mall in Washington. It was an unprecedented display of solidarity with Soviet Jewry and played a significant role in facilitating the release of Soviet Jews. The demonstrators were Jews of all stripes and from all across America, Orthodox and non-Orthodox. I know, because as a young student I was there.

Although she survived the attack, she was demonized on Egypt's talk shows for the violence she endured.

With the conclusion of the Syrian fiasco, the Obama administration had to turn it’s attention to a more imminent threat.