Politics

Must the Mayor of Jerusalem Speak English?

October 9, 2013

It was meant to be a relatively simple, if snarky post to Facebook. I’d received an email in English that Jerusalem mayoral candidate Moshe Lion would be speaking at the OU Center, a venue that caters nearly 100% to English speakers…but not in English, rather in “easy Hebrew.” I found this rather ironic and commented […]

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A Tough Vote in Jerusalem

September 18, 2013

If you’d asked me a month ago who I would be voting for in October’s Jerusalem municipality race, I’d have answered quickly: the incumbent mayor, Nir Barkat, and the Yerushalmim party headed by Rachel Azaria. But then everything got all mixed up with the entry of a new movement called Ometz Lev (literally “braveness of […]

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Petty Partisanship or Unfortunate Blips: This Week at the Western Wall and Better Place

August 27, 2013

This was not a good week for progress. Or more to the point, for continuing the progress that we thought we’d already made. Rather, it seems like politics and “business as usual” have torpedoed two bold initiatives that could have made real change. The issues on the table: the government’s backward proposal for addressing egalitarian […]

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Moshe Lion vs. Nir Barkat: Twisting the Numbers

August 18, 2013

It’s only been a few weeks since the race for Jerusalem mayor, which was assumed to be a slam dunk for incumbent Nir Barkat, due to the lack of any competition whatsoever, heated up with the entry of a serious contender, Moshe Lion, the former chairman of the Jerusalem Development Authority. Suddenly ubiquitous billboards showing […]

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Dan Ariely and the Black Market

June 23, 2013

The most thrilling session at the Israeli Presidential Conference last week was not the panel on “Should We Wait It Out: Israel and a Changing Middle East” which featured three U.S. and Israeli ambassadors and a former head of the Mossad. It was not Yair Lapid’s speech on how integration of the haredim will produce an economic […]

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Dirty Diapers of Shavuot Past

May 13, 2013

It was Shavuot 1985. I had finished college and had come to Israel the year before, where I was in the flush of religious epiphany. Everything was new, exciting and, as I gushed to family and friends back home, true – my opinions still untarnished by politics, the wisdom that comes when you’ve got more than 23 years of […]

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Troubles at my Alma Mater

March 13, 2013

My alma mater was all over the Jewish news last week, but not for good reasons. Oberlin College, which I attended as an undergraduate some 30 years ago, has inexplicably seen a number of racist and anti-Semitic incidents in the past month. On February 15, students found a note reading “Whites only” tacked above a […]

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Jerusalem Youth Chorus Records with Israeli Pop Superstar David Broza

January 31, 2013

I’m not sure what who was more excited – our 15-year-old-son Aviv who was about to meet one of Israel’s biggest pop stars, or his parents, given that Aviv had actually never heard of said star. But we had – my wife Jody’s mom even has a picture of her with David Broza from a concert he […]

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Election Day “Live Blog”

January 22, 2013

(I decided to “live blog” election day from the Blum family perspective. The first part appeared on the Israelity website only. Here’s part two.) I don’t know if it was the fresh air or the physical exertion of our two-hour  hike earlier in the day (see the previous post), but we did it. We all made up our […]

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Christmas Carols and Coexistence in Jerusalem

December 26, 2012

I can’t remember the last time I heard Christmas Carols sung live – not in the 18 years that I’ve lived in Israel and before that probably only on TV and radio for years. But this Christmas Eve, we attended the YMCA’s annual Christmas Carols Concert. The official reason: our 14-year-old son, Aviv, was performing […]

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