If you don’t know any better, Tykotzin actually looks like a decent place to live. A small town in northeast Poland, it’s just a nicelooking Polish village. Modest but wellmaintained homes, clean streets and a well-coiffed central square with a church at its edge. The people of Tykotzin are probably not particularly wealthy, but neither do they seem poor. They’re reasonably well-dressed, and the town is actually pretty. Just a pleasant little place in the middle of nowhere. Were it not for the extraordinarily beautiful synagogue that’s been turned into a museum (it’s cared for by non-Jews, of course, for there are no Jews in Tykotzin), you’d have very little way of ...

There are still those unexpected moments here, fleeting and infrequent though they may be. Moments that provide a glimpse of what we could yet create in this young country of ours. With cottage cheese stealing the headlines, doctors on strike, the peace process in an utter stall and the UN’s September showdown creeping ever closer, they are moments worth reflecting on, and sharing. Some three years ago, an anonymous donor gave the Shalem Center (where I work) a generous grant to offer liberal arts enrichment programming to the country’s top high school students. Schools weren’t challenging the best kids, we knew; most of what they learned was being taught for the bagrut matriculation exams, and intellectual ...

No day of the year in Israel is more agonizing than Yom Ha-Zikaron—the Remembrance Day for the Fallen of Israel’s Wars. For 24 hours, the country’s unceasing sniping gives way to a pervasive sense of national unity not apparent at any other moment; honor and sanctity can be felt everywhere. Israel’s many military cemeteries are filled to capacity with anguished families visiting the graves of loved ones. Restaurants are shuttered. One of the country’s television stations does nothing but list the names of the 23,000 men and women who gave their lives to defend the Jewish state, some of them killed even before independence was declared and the last of whom typically died only days ...

[Note:  On May 3rd, Daniel Gordis addressed the “J-Street Leadership Mission to Israel and Palestine.”  The following column is based on his remarks that day.] Good morning and welcome to Jerusalem.  It’s a pleasure to meet with this Leadership Mission; I understand that there are some first time visitors to Israel among you, so a particular welcome to those of you who’ve never been here before. Before we got seated, one member of your group conveyed a message from the Israeli Consul General in his home community.  The message was that I shouldn’t speak to you.  As you can imagine, I received similar advice from a wide array of people after I received your invitation; but ...

There were years when Yom Ha’atzmaut was cause for near-euphoria. The first sovereign Jewish state in 2,000 years, Israel represented to Jews everywhere much more than a country, a flag, and even a homeland. Independence for Jews was synonymous with a renewed lease on life, and therefore, even in the midst of unending wars, periodic economic crises and many dark clouds on the horizon, Israelis’ celebration of independence was much more than a good party. There was an existential quality to Yom Ha’atzmaut, a sense of sanctity that not everyone could articulate, but that everyone could feel. This year, however, that unbridled euphoria is going to be hard to come by. Israel is marginalized in ...

We read it so often that we hardly even notice it anymore. It’s that famous line from the Haggadah, which Jews around the world will recite in just a few days: “And even if we were all wise, filled with understanding, all elders and all learned in the Torah, we would still be obligated to tell the story of the Exodus from Egypt.” Why, though? If we were all so deeply learned, what possible need would there be to tell a story? The message is clear – there are truths that emerge from stories that cannot be gleaned from “mere” study. There is knowledge to which the heart can lead us that the mind cannot. As ...

In this spring of youthful Arab discontent, it has become de rigueur to note that no one could have seen this coming. We had no warning, the strategists are all explaining – there was no way to predict this. Perhaps. But closer to home, where other seismic shifts are already changing our world, we do know already what is happening. Far from the Middle East, a new battleground is emerging, and it is going to change the world we bequeath to the next generation no less than what is happening in Egypt, Syria and Libya. For the most part, though, we’ve chosen to ignore it. This battleground, strange though it may sound, is the world of ...

It’s a strange world, indeed, when the one place in the Middle East that seems the most stable and secure is the State of Israel. This is the spring of Arab revolt. Tunisia has fallen, Hosni Mubarak is gone, Yemen is in danger, Hezbollah has taken over Lebanon, Saudi troops have moved into Bahrain, Jordanians are nervous, Syrian officers have fired on protesters, and in the skies above Libya allied missiles fly, seeking to destroy Muammar Gaddafi’s defenses. Only in Israel do things seem quiet. It’s the nahafoch hu of the Book of Esther, a world in which what unfolds is precisely the opposite of what might have been expected. The similarities don’t end there. For just ...

Lev Paschov, an Israeli soldier who immigrated to Israel under the Law of Return from the Former Soviet Union, was killed while on active duty in Southern Lebanon in 1993, and buried twice. He was first interred in a regular Israeli military cemetery, but after it was discovered that his mother was not Jewish, his body was exhumed, and Paschov was buried a second time, in a cemetery for non-Jews. For many Israelis, the macabre end of Paschov’s brief life journey was deeply disturbing. How was it possible that someone could be welcomed to Israel under the Law of Return, serve the Jewish state’s army, and die defending his adopted homeland, ...

I still recall the day, some 40 years ago, when my mother told me that she remembered vividly the moment that she’d heard that FDR had died. I was stunned. She’d been so young. How could she possibly remember it at all, much less so clearly? Gradually, I came to understand that there is a certain kind of moment when something so important transpires that, even years later, we remember not only what happened, but where we were, who spoke, how we felt. Each of us has a different list. Mine includes Anwar Sadat’s arrival in Tel Aviv, and Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination. The Challenger explosion. Ariel Sharon’s stroke. Many more. Two weeks ago, there was another. I woke ...