The Beacon

As we walk through the streets of Manhattan every day, it’s no anomaly to see at least one homeless person on every street. They make us uncomfortable, and we don’t want to give them money, but we feel bad not doing so. While looking at a homeless man sitting at the corner of 34th and [...]

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Last May, Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin pledged he’d recognize the Armenian Genocide in the Knesset.  Rivlin’s a moderate in the Likud Party, but he’s been a hawk on the issue.  For five years, the Knesset has been debating commemorating the Ottoman Empire’s crimes.  In 2011, they finally made the discussions public.  So why is it so [...]

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What is it about one Mr. Tim Tebow that brings a city to its knees? How can one man garner so much attention? For those who of you without much knowledge of football, allow me to declare that Tim Tebow is not your typical NFL Quarterback. Yet he has been able to rally teammates, fans [...]

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Israel and France have had a complicated relationship for decades. In the 1960s, French President Charles de Gaulle abruptly severed his country’s alliance with Israel in favor of ties with Arab countries. The French were suffering after the Algerian War of Independence, so Israel was hung out to dry. But France is extremely important for [...]

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Israeli papers are treating the attack in France as if it happened in Tel Aviv or Ashdod. The pictures of the victims are spread across the newspapers like the Fogel family’s were after last year’s massacre in the West Bank. The attack has hit a raw nerve in Israel in much the same way, and [...]

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It’s time to accept it. Men and women are just not equal. Physically, emotionally- they are different. I’m not saying there aren’t anomalies, but you can’t possibly argue that the genders belong on equal footing. I mean, listen bra burners: girls just look weird and make everyone else uncomfortable when they don’t wear bras. Like [...]

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I vividly remember learning the specific brachot (blessings) for food in my Modern Orthodox upbringing: I can still see the flashcards decorated with colorful pictures of all types of food, from shiny challot to crunchy bowls of cereal. We had to guess which bracha matched which food, and being the proud winner of the Bracha [...]

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For thousands of years, my ancestors referred to an arid strip of desert land as our home. Our language bespoke the pain and joy of our national history. We practiced the religion of our ancestors, and we organized our society according to that noble tradition. That is, until the Europeans came. They took our land. [...]

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I haven’t written much on Iran’s nuclear weapons because, in my years as a blogger, I thought whatever I wrote would just get lost in the pile of other posts on the topic. But for as long as I have been writing, the analysis hasn’t changed much. What will happen with Iran’s nuclear program is still [...]

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American Jews are an endangered demographic. This fact is not debatable. What is debatable is how the Jewish community should deal with the issue of intermarriage, which is one of the main causes of the decline of American Jewry. The National Jewish Population Survey most recently conducted a survey in 2001 — and the results [...]

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The Light and the Darkness A Look at Israel’s Political Challenges and Overcoming Them. Orthodox Jews define Purim in many ways. It is associated with autonomy, salvation, and euphoria, and therefore easily translatable into the political goings-on for Jews today.  As a result, Purim is often attached to Jews’ modern dilemmas and crises. Because of [...]

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Thoughts on the Tree of Life A bi-weekly column on the tension between rooted tradition and progressive change in Modern Orthodox Judaism. From the perspective of a Torah-observant college student with a deep love for food, justice, and community. In recent weeks, the Associated Press has released an alarming number of reports revealing organized and [...]

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Sitra Achra Musings from the West Coast Sitra Achra is produced by the staff of Ha’Am: UCLA’s Jewish Newsmagazine. Their original work can be found at haam.org and in print. Throughout my exchanges with politically interested Jewish people, I have encountered (at least) two effective strategies for obviating challenges to Israel’s possession of the West [...]

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Sitra Achra Musings from the West Coast Sitra Achra is produced by the staff of Ha’Am: UCLA’s Jewish Newsmagazine. Their original work can be found at haam.org and in print. Flip on any news channel — the odds are pretty good that someone will be speculating about Barack Obama’s chances at reelection and predicting the winner of [...]

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The Death of Common Sense A place to mourn, reflect, and resurrect our forgotten friend. Curiously eying the elaborate profiles on YU Connects accounts, you get the impression that modern Jews view their potential dates like a wedding. Of course, I hearken back to the days when girls would sit around and plan their weddings, [...]

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The World Around Us Here in this pretty world Gallantry took its last bow… Here was the last to be seen of knights and their ladies fair, of Master and of Slave. Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered. A Civilization gone with the wind -Opening sequence [...]

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Thoughts on the Tree of Life A bi-weekly column on the tension between rooted tradition and progressive change in Modern Orthodox Judaism. From the perspective of a Torah-observant college student with a deep love for food, justice, and community.Last week on a frigid Thursday night, I stood outside of a Queens Kosher supermarket with several [...]

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A Look at Israel’s Political Challenges and Overcoming Them It’s tough to analyze how things will play out for Israel in the wake of any of the instances of instability in the Arab World over the past year. Virtually any article on the topic is contrived. The reason is simply because Israel is not central [...]

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The World Around Us Let me paint a scene for you: You’re sitting in a car in downtown Baltimore, stopped behind a long line of cars at a red light. Two cars in front of you, a big, muscular black man opens his door, releasing earsplitting sounds of angry rap onto the street as he [...]

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