The Old Country

Bari Weiss is my hero

January 15, 2022

Bari Weiss’s political outlook is not one with which I normally identify. But the more I’ve been reading her newsletter, the more I find myself nodding in agreement.

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Jews are not white: Race and identity in Israel and the U.S.

November 21, 2021

Should Jews and Israelis be considered “white supremacists?” Are Jews from Arab countries “white?” If so, then who are the people of color?

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Traveling to America? Beware the PCR testing shuffle

July 18, 2021

Travel during a pandemic involves some extra hassles. Like scheduling a PCR Covid test within 72 hours of your flight. Here’s our experience.

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Musings of an Israeli in America

July 6, 2021

I just spent three weeks in the U.S. I have nine observations, covering everything from masks to pancakes. Plus one-hour weed delivery!

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What’s really happening on American college campuses today

January 4, 2020

What’s really happening for pro-Israel students on American college campuses today? I’m not there. So I asked Liel Zahavi-Asa, an Israel advocate.

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The price of memory

November 9, 2017

“We found Mom. She’s safe.” That was the text message I received from my brother in California. It came out of the blue.

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Is “Foreign Language Learning Disability” real?

April 6, 2017

Fluent in English but can’t seem to master a second language? You may have Foreign Language Learning Disability. That’s my experience with Hebrew

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Israel: the new Jewish shtetl

January 23, 2017

Hebrew Union College Professor Steven M. Cohen published an essay last month with some startling conclusions about Jewish demography. Reviewing figures compiled by the Pew Research Center over the past half century, he writes in The Forward that the number of Orthodox Jews in America has quadrupled in just two generations – with 79,000 “grandparents” […]

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“Trading down” – must aliyah always mean a career decline?

June 21, 2016

As I was researching The aliyah premium – how much more does it really cost to live in Israel?, I quickly realized that the only fair way to deal with the wide variances in individual earnings and tax rates was to stick with official and presumably impartial government sources like the Israeli Central Bureau of […]

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The “aliyah premium” – how much more does it really cost to live in Israel?

May 23, 2016

It’s no secret that immigrants to Israel from North America take a financial hit. But as I finished up my U.S. taxes last month (as an Israeli with dual citizenship, I am required to file in both countries), I stopped for a moment to ponder exactly how big that hit has been. What is the […]

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