In the News

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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Shabbat without Harry

July 27, 2007

“This is the longest Shabbat ever,” pouted thirteen-year-old Merav over the weekend. The reason for her distress was having to wait until Shabbat was over in order to claim her copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows from our local Steimatzky’s book store. Religious Jews around the world were at a distinct disadvantage in […]

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Running the Bases

July 5, 2007

It’s been over 30 years since I was at a baseball game, but that unintended hiatus ended this week when I joined my family to root, root, root for the home team as the Modi’in Miracle suited up to play the Ra’anana Express as part of the Holy Land’s first professional baseball league. The afternoon […]

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Mamma Mia That’s a Spicy Boycott

June 29, 2007

When does something as innocuous and pleasurable as going to the theater become a political statement? When you’re seeing the British touring company of Mama Mia in Israel, that’s when. The Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot ran a story last week headlined “ABBA musical boycotted in Israel?” which reports a claim in the U.K.-based London Times […]

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Ghost Towns

June 7, 2007

We recently learned that a neighbor in our apartment complex is trying to sell his flat, identical in size and layout to ours, for 50 percent more than we paid for our place two years ago. While this is certainly good news for the value of our property, it’s bad for the neighborhood. It means […]

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Howard’s Hooters

May 31, 2007

Last month the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot carried a small item that the U.S. restaurant chain Hooters plans to open its first branch in Israel this summer. That was followed by a piece indicating that a Tel Aviv radio station is in negotiations to bring the Howard Stern Show to the Israeli airwaves. Now, regular […]

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Snakes and Angels: Shavuot Learning on Sderot and Gaza

May 24, 2007

It’s traditional to learn Torah on the Jewish holiday of Shavuot which began this past Tuesday night. Nine-year-old Aviv’s class had a pre-Shavuot student-parent study session at school earlier in the week and my wife Jody and I went. But by the time we walked out, I found myself drawing political rather than religious conclusions. […]

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New Radio Station Hopes to Build Bridges Through Music

May 17, 2007

Issie Kirsh, a Jewish businessman who has been involved in efforts to build bridges between blacks and whites in post-Apartheid South Africa, has a vision for promoting peace in the Middle East: soft rock hits from the 80s and 90s. Kirsh’s latest project, an ambitious joint Israeli/Palestinian radio station broadcasting in English to Israel, the […]

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The Royal Mikve – Jpost Talkbacks

May 4, 2007

Last Friday the Jerusalem Post, as part of a new arrangement to reprint articles from This Normal Life, published my piece “The Royal Mikve,” Jody and my adventure searching for a mikve while on vacation at the Dead Sea. The story, which chronicles a less than modest encounter with the staff in charge of the […]

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