May 10, 2020 7 min Freedom, climate change and the Pandemic “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” So begins Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s book “The Social Contract.” I’ve been thinking abou...
Dec 5, 2019 4 min Netanyahu Blames everyone but himself One well-known example of “chutzpah” is someone who murders his parents, then pleads for mercy from the court because he is an orphan. Wa...
Sep 1, 2019 14 min The Great Fake Imagine a shiny Cadillac pulls up to your house and a guy in a fancy suit, smelling of cologne, knocks on your door. “Just sign this,” he...
Mar 26, 2019 17 min Masters of the Universe Israel's economic planners have fallen under the sway of the International Monetary Fund, and are hypnotized by the Credit Rating Agencie...
Mar 25, 2019 10 min Why Has Social Justice been Written out of the Torah? We are faced with a religious leadership that is largely indifferent to the economic gaps that have opened up in Israel, or the neo-liber...
Mar 7, 2019 11 min Inside Out In the past, those figures who most represented the Jewish people’s universalistic thrust, such as the Pauline Jesus and Marx, soundly re...
Feb 28, 2019 15 min Shlomo's Torah Shlomo’s Torah transported listeners emotionally and imaginatively, connecting them to inner states of longing and healing — to a differe...
Feb 28, 2019 13 min Messiah Now Chabad Messianists, the Rebbe, and the Future of Judaism On April 9 this year, some four thousand men and women crammed into Yad Eliyahu,...
Feb 27, 2019 10 min יד לא נעלמה ברדיפה אחרי כסף וכוח הולכים ומשתלטים כמה תאגידי ענק על משאבי הטבע והכלכלה של העולם כולו. התהליך, אשר גורם להרס חייהם ותרבותם של מאות מילי...
Feb 25, 2019 14 min The Brutal Regime Across the Red Sea Eritreans in Israel claim they are refugees from a murderous regime. In their thousands, they have braved Sudan and the Sinai desert in ...
Feb 24, 2019 12 min Brick Factories, Modern Slavery, and Immigration from Rural Villages All over Nepal and India, brick factories rise up whenever there are patches of open land near a large city such as Kathmandu. Work migra...
Feb 17, 2019 11 min Brilliance of the Baal Shem Tov Two hundred and fifty years after the Baal Shem Tov’s death, English readers finally have a scholarly compilation of some of his most imp...
Feb 14, 2019 8 min The Art of Living How Ethiopian Israelis became Masters of Living on Less There is an art to living on 2500 shekels a month, and many within the Ethiopian ...
Feb 14, 2019 13 min Yamima Avital: First Jewish Woman Mystic with her Own Written Torah Punch Yamima Avital's name into a (Hebrew) Internet search engine and you will find forums with endless exchanges of information about wh...
Feb 13, 2019 18 min Judaism and the Crisis of the Rural Village in the Global South For many of us nourished and inspired by the integrity and spiritual depth of the Orthodox tradition at its best, how to apply Torah to m...
Feb 12, 2019 17 min Cave of the Patriarchs The Cave Below the earth's surface, where it is cool, damp and deep, a great light—a blinding light--is waiting, wrapped in darkness. Bel...
Feb 6, 2019 7 min A Dream Defiled The Betrayal of Ethiopia's Democracy By Micha Odenheimer The Washington Post Sunday, December 18, 2005 The Addis Ababa airport I used to ...
Feb 6, 2019 12 min Jerusalem Still Burning The sheer possibilities of the Global South attracted me - as Israel's had eighteen years ago. In Kathmandu last summer, those two loves ...
Feb 6, 2019 6 min The Zionist Dream Awaits a Peoplehood Vision https://ejewishphilanthropy.com/the-zionist-dream-awaits-a-peoplehood-vision/ Eleven years ago, I created Tevel b’Tzedek, an Israeli orga...
Feb 6, 2019 3 min We don’t need experts to know about climate change We can learn all we need to know about global warming from subsistence farmers struggling for survival I learned the most about climate c...
Feb 6, 2019 10 min An Iraqi Letter to W. Boosh Despite pervasive anger at the U.S., public opinion in Iraq has crystallized around the conviction that the Americans need to stay until ...
Feb 6, 2019 7 min Victims of a Broken Promise http://www1.jafi.org.il/papers/1999/july/jrjuly5.htm (July 5,1999) A year after Israel pledged to rescue them, Quara’s Jews wait. Hungry,...
Feb 6, 2019 6 min Its About Politics, Money, and Tycoons, Mr. President https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/an-open-letter-to-shimon-peres/ Accepting a lavish Bank Hapoalim salary revealed a shocking disconnect fr...
Feb 6, 2019 13 min The Torah of Globalization What guidance can the Jewish tradition, from the Bible onwards, give to us in the age of Neo-Liberal economic globalization? Although his...