By Burton Boxerman, Special to the Jewish Light
• Published February 20, 2020
David Ben-Gurion, known as the founder of the State of Israel, has been the subject of many books. His latest biographer is Tom Segev, an Israeli historian, author and journalist who is associated with Israel’s New Historians, a group challenging many...
After two millennia, on May 14, 1948, the re-establishment of an independent Jewish nation in its traditional homeland became an unprecedented historical reality. In the face of belligerent regional and international opposition, the scattered remnants...
WASHINGTON — For decades, the joke in Israel went: How do you know when Shimon Peres is headed for defeat? When he announces that he is running. Peres — today Israel’s extremely popular president and on Wednesday a recipient of the Presidential...
NEW YORK -- Today’s Reform movement is built on the shoulders of our 19th-century Reform forbearers who took Jewish tradition in an entirely new direction, re-envisioning our sacred texts and practices in the light of scientific inquiry and the new...
The Tal Law is dead. This is not only a good thing, but indeed essential to the future viability of an indivisible Israel. In a 6-3 decision last week, the Israeli Supreme Court struck down the 2002 law that allowed full-time yeshiva students to defer...
By Linda Gradstein, JTA
• Published February 1, 2012
JERUSALEM—When Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, granted a few hundred haredi Orthodox Jews an exemption from army service, it's likely he never dreamed that 63 years later, tens of thousands of haredi Israelis would claim the exemption—or...
By Burton A. Boxerman, Special to the Jewish Light
• Published January 4, 2012
"Ben-Gurion: A Political Life" is the 19th title in the Jewish Encounter series from Shocken and Nextbook Press, written by Shimon Peres with the assistance of David Landau, former editor of Haaretz. Peres is currently the Israeli president and a protégé...
By Seth J. Frantzman, JointMedia News Service
• Published November 30, 2011
"Whoever thought that there had been no point in supporting [Israeli] agreements with tyrants now argues that the Arab Spring let loose the hatred which the Arabs feel toward Israel. But Israel is not able to stop history. In the dilemma between the support...
By Jeffrey F. Barken, JointMedia News Service
• Published November 23, 2011
Kibbutz Dorot lies roughly 10 miles from the Gaza border, 4.5 miles from the college town of Sderot and 18 miles from the Israeli port city of Ashkelon. Strangely, the kibbutz appears to be protected from the sporadic volleys of rockets launched by terrorist...
BY ELAINE K. ALEXANDER, SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH LIGHT
• Published May 4, 2011
Who would have thought that when Adolph Eichmann stood trial in Israel for crimes against the Jewish people, the "gallery" would have at any time "erupted with laughter?" In her most recent book "The Eichmann Trial" (Random House, $24.95), Deborah Lipstadt,...
