We Teach Who We Are: A Practical Guide for Classroom Educators
Teaching About Israel in Times of Crisis Table of Contents Introduction: The Educator at the Center Chapter 1: Understanding the Changed Landscape The New Reality The Ripple Effects Opportunities Within Crisis Chapter 2: The Educator’s Journey—Personal and Professional Integration Acknowledging Your Own Experience The Professional-Personal Interface Modeling Resilience Chapter 3: Rethinking Educational Objectives Core Questions…
The Global Jewish-Israel Syntheses Imagine: We Are All Israeli
I was thinking, growing up, my world was a tapestry of hyphenated identities. There was my Russian-American friend, my Italian-American…
Colonization vs. Decolonization
Historical Patterns of Conquest and Return in the Middle East The narrative of colonization and decolonization has become central to…
The Voice That Calls: Jewish Awakening in Our Time
Imagine being awakened at 4 AM by a voice calling you to something urgent, something that cannot wait for a…
To Occupy or Not To Occupy Gaza
The morning of October 7, 2023, marked a watershed moment in the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Hamas militants breached the Gaza-Israel…
The only biblical references to this period of these Days of Awe, beginning with Rosh HaShanna, we are about to enter is found in Leviticus/VaYikra 23:23, “Speak to the people of Israel, saying, In the seventh month, in the first day of the month, shall you have a sabbath, a memorial of blowing of horns,…
The Hamas rocket assault is bad for Palestinians and Israelis alike TEL AVIV — When it started, we heard the children’s school was going virtual again that day. Coronavirus again? No, rockets — 250 had been fired into Israel from Gaza overnight. By that evening, we were in the bomb shelter, as rockets were flying to Tel Aviv.…
We continue to commit such a disservice to our youth, putting them on the frontline to fight for our right to exist, carrying the weight of 2,000 years of exile, when they themselves don’t even know the aleph-bet of their own existence – let alone – Israel’s. Why should a teenager on their way to…
Living a Jewish life includes doing “Jewish things”, infused with purpose, values and memories (i.e. “we were slaves in Egypt” and what that means from a practical and conceptual worldview). Passover, a microcosm of Jewish life, exists within a set of guidelines in preparation for the festival of redemption including the cleaning of Hametz and…
So, a kid comes back from a trip to Israel and is expected to know it all? Be an advocate? How? And why? We have committed such a disservice to our kids, putting them on the frontline to fight for our right to exist, to carry the weight of 2,000 years of exile, when they themselves don’t…
The Abraham Accords have produced a whole new world many of us could have only dreamed of. Indeed, there are political and business benefits that will be gained, but more importantly there is a movement of the people – a social group – with an eye to the future. Individual conversations and group forums have…