In the News

From Barack to Barkat: A Look Back at the November Elections

November 14, 2008

The just concluded Jerusalem election, while certainly not as important on a world stage as last week’s U.S. presidential contest, was in many ways spookily similar to its overseas counterpart. For those who supported Nir Barkat, who beat his main competitor Meir Porush by a commanding 9 points (52 to 43 percent), the sheer jubilance […]

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Jerusalem Election Diary: Haaretz gets it so wrong

November 7, 2008

I don’t usually write about the same topic two weeks in a row, but, with less than a week to go, the upcoming Jerusalem mayoral elections is so critical that I feel compelled to post again. Last Friday, the Haaretz newspaper, considered Israel’s version of “The New York Times” (and a paper which I regularly […]

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Jerusalem Elections 2008: The Most Crucial in Years

October 31, 2008

Several weeks ago I gave an Israeli take on the upcoming U.S. elections. But there’s another vote in November that may prove to be just as momentous for this country. I’m talking about the Jerusalem mayoral elections. Five years ago, the status quo was broken when the ultra-Orthodox (haredi) community fielded a candidate for mayor […]

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Twitterific

October 17, 2008

I’ll admit that when I first heard about Twitter, I thought it was the most ridiculous thing in the world. As a journalist and a long time blogger, I take pride in crafting a well thought out story, with a beginning, middle and end, and a common theme running throughout. So the idea of “micro-blogging” […]

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An Israeli Take on the Upcoming U.S. Elections

October 10, 2008

I just received my absentee ballot for the upcoming U.S. elections in the mail and I’m psyched. Yes, I know that some critics will question whether an American living outside the country has the moral right to vote for a president of a country in which he is no longer living. But I plan on […]

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Transportation Planner Provides Peek into Jerusalem Transit Changes

March 7, 2008

Motorists in Jerusalem have for several months now been stuck in severe traffic jams while traveling near or through the city center. That’s unfortunate, though not entirely unintentional, explains Marc Render, partner and co-founder of AmAv, a transportation planning consultancy that has been actively involved in designing traffic pattern changes in the Jerusalem area. The […]

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The Rabbi’s Daughter and Me

February 15, 2008

Despite the controversial subtitle “A True Story of Sex, Drugs and Orthodoxy,” Reva Mann’s new autobiography “The Rabbi’s Daughter” is neither as shocking or inflammatory as its name would suggest. Rather, Mann’s powerful memoir will seem familiar to many Jews who grew up in secular homes, crossed over to a more extreme practice of religion […]

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Cheerleaders for Aliyah

January 4, 2008

Last Thursday, my wife Jody and I roused ourselves out of bed at the ungodly hour of 4:50 AM in order to arrive at Ben Gurion Airport, not for a trip to some exotic destination, but in time to greet an El Al flight of 191 new immigrants making aliyah to Israel. The process was […]

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Bully for the Teachers

November 30, 2007

Last Saturday night we went to a house concert performed by Laurie Ornstein, an English teacher turned folk singer who has taken to busking for a living during the protracted high school teachers strike. The concert was lovely – full of new and classic protest songs, some rewritten to focus attention on the teachers’ current […]

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Court Awards $12.9 Million to Marla’s Family

September 20, 2007

How much is a human life worth? According to a Washington D.C. federal judge, $12.9 million. That’s the amount that Judge Royce Lamberth awarded to the parents of our cousin Marla Bennett who was killed in the July 31, 2002 bombing attack on the Frank Sinatra Cafeteria at Hebrew University. Lamberth found that Hamas, which […]

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