By Caitlin Yoshiko Kandil From Switzerland’s ban on minarets, to France’s ban on headscarves, and the controversy that raged over Park 51, the “Ground Zero Mosque” in lower Manhattan, religious fear is on the rise, writes Martha Nussbaum. In her latest book, The New Religious Intolerance,...
Jewish and Arab writers—Amos Elon, Hillel Halkin, Etgar Keret, Amos Oz, Naomi Ragen, Meir Shalev, Sayed Kashua, Ali Khalili, Ghassan Khatib, Ali Qleibo and Elias Zananiri—describe their visions of Jerusalem’s future....
We thought we couldn't love Ira Glass anymore. The hipster glasses. The public-radio sensitivity. The Baltimore roots. But then he recorded the title story of Etgar Keret's newest short story collection, Suddenly a Knock on the Door, and we were proven wrong. Enjoy. (For more from...
by Kelley Kidd I spent Passover this year in Washington, DC. It was a far cry from the fall, when I celebrated the High Holy Days in Vietnam, and Hannukah in Myanmar. The experiences were inspiring in that both provided me with a sense of belonging,...
by Kelley Kidd It is around this time during Passover, as the seder leftovers begin to dwindle, that I begin to rapidly lose interest in the standard Passover options of basic broth and matzah where bread would be. However, it simply feels inconsistent with the Passover...
By Martin Berman-Gorvine As Passover approaches, I have been reading the psychologist Erich Fromm’s 1941 work, Escape from Freedom. Writing when Nazi Germany was at its height, Fromm sought the reasons why so many people felt their freedom to be “an intolerable burden” that they wished...
By Marshall Breger In 2011, Sen. Joseph Lieberman suggested that U.S. nationals, “homegrown” or otherwise, be stripped of their citizenship if they are “engaging in or purposefully and materially supporting hostilities against the United States.” More recently, in Israel, right-wing Knesset members pushed for legislation taking...
First off, let me be clear that I do not condone Israel’s official use of sarcasm, wit or anything else that could be construed as more entertaining than the turgid pronouncements of native English-speaking governments. Since my childhood I have been told that government and...
By Letty Cottin Pogrebin In 1959, when I was 19, there was no birth control pill, doctors did not prescribe diaphragms or IUDs for unmarried women, and abortion was a crime. So when I got pregnant, I decided to kill myself by jumping off the Triborough...