In the News

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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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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