Sublime

The near asceticism of Zionist leaders like Ben-Gurion, A. D. Gordon, or Golda Meir also disappeared. Israel’s early leaders had eschewed physical comforts, and even when they reached the peak of the political ladder, they lived in small, plain apartments with astonishingly few comforts. That, too, was gone. Israeli leaders began to permit themselv

Did some American Jews prefer the moral ease of victimhood, I asked myself, to the complexities of Israeli power? Was no Israel better than an Israel that fell short of their dreams?

HIS DISAPPOINTMENT IN AMERICAN Jews notwithstanding, Ben-Gurion presided over a project of immigrant absorption of unprecedented proportions. Never in human history had such a small population absorbed so many immigrants so successfully.

Caring-for may be impossible, but caring-about need not be.

WITH THE GAZA EVACUATION complete, getting Israel disentangled from Palestinians on the West Bank was next on Sharon’s docket. To smooth his political path, he left the Likud and in November 2005 formed his own party, Kadima Yisrael (“Forward, Israel!”), recruiting centrists from both Labor and Likud. But four months after the Gaza disengagement, S

Could it be that today’s society has made Jewish identity superfluous?

Ever since the First Zionist Congress in 1897, Zionists had seen themselves as the central address for the world’s Jews. As the Nazis had eradicated Polish Jewry, American Jews were now the largest and most significant Jewish community in the world—and they were warning Israel to back off that sentiment.

The sum of the Rabbis’ educational and halachic efforts was that participation in religious life was democratized.