On this sign, unlike any of the others in the zoo which display Hebrew, English and Arabic, this sign had Hebrew and Arabic in the center, English on the side, and under them all, a brief Yiddish exclamation - "Dos is nisht a chazir." This is not a pig!! One can chuckle at a sign like that, and say "Only in Israel! Or you can ask yourself what that sign actually reveals about Israeli society.

So there we are, sitting at the Shabbat lunch table, guests of friends we hadn’t seen in far too long. We were three couples, all of us immigrants, each with kids, ranging from 22 (with a boyfriend) to 4 (without a boyfriend). And another couple, parents of our hosts, visiting from the States, both of them well known and highly regarded academics. Sometime in the middle of lunch, the mother of the hostess, whose academic interest is “identity,” asks us all, without even a hint of irony or condescension, “Can you please explain to me why you would choose to live here? What got you to leave what you had and come here?”

No one, it was clear, had asked any of us that ...

Dear Mr. Lieberman: Quite understandably, you didn't ask me to run your campaign. But now, in this extended hiatus between the campaign and a new government, I'd like to offer you some unsolicited advice about the next stage of the message you convey to the Israeli people. It's no secret that you've aroused the ire of many, from religious parties on the Right to those on the Left concerned about civil liberties. Ironically, though, your message could easily have appealed to many religious people and to some of those committed to civil liberties. To do that, you would simply have had to craft your message slightly differently, which you still can do. Let me explain. Ironically, of all the parties that received significant numbers of votes, ...

This past Shabbat, when good friends of ours came over for lunch, we caught up with their daughter, now an officer in the IDF's Education Corps. She's working with the most problematic soldiers - kids without high-school diplomas from broken and impoverished homes, kids with a history of violence, young men for whom the army may be the last chance to fashion a life of some worth. One day, she tells us, she's speaking to them about Zionism, and one of them asks her, "How do you know so much about Zionism? Are you a new immigrant?" We all chuckled at the naivete. What, only a new immigrant (which she's not) can know something about Zionism? That's kind of funny. But the laughter dissipated ...

When we lived in the States, periods like this were agonizing for me, providing, as they did, massive overdoses of cognitive dissonance. I was thinking about only one place, but I'd chosen to live in another. I was concerned about one group of people more than anyone else, but I'd elected not to live with them. The gap between what I felt and where I made my home felt unbearable. Yes, we sought to compensate. In those pre-Internet days, we read the paper voraciously. We listened to the radio incessantly, and when things were truly tense, we found ways of rigging up televisions in our offices. But still, it was vicarious participation, and at times, the pain of that dissonance was more than I ...

While Israel's decision to defend the citizens of its uncontested, sovereign territory was long overdue, the predictable international condemnation of Operation Cast Lead was virtually immediate. Israel ought to ignore most of it, for despite protestations to the contrary, it comes from people who would just as soon see the Jewish State eroded to the point of indefensibility. But what about those, particularly Jews, who level criticism yet clearly do not wish to see Israel destroyed? So far, most Jews abroad have been supportive. But as Palestinian civilian casualties mount or Israel makes concessions when the conflict abates, Diaspora Jews - and primarily American Jews - are likely to voice opposition, both from the Left and from the rRght. Which leads to that oft-discussed and ...

We didn’t mean to, but we lied to our kids. Almost ten years ago, shortly after we made aliyah, we were sitting with our three young children having dinner. One of the boys, still getting used to the idea that his life was going to be very different in Israel, looked up from his food, and asked out of nowhere, “Is Israel still going to have an army when I’m eighteen?” He was scared. But we knew that he had no reason to be. “Yes, there’ll be an army,” we told him. “But there’s going to be peace by then. By the time you’re eighteen, everything’s going to be different. You’ll see.” I still remember how certain we were, and how relieved he looked. A couple of ...

This is a country prone to America-envy. If you’re not careful, you can find yourself romanticizing life in the States, constantly seeing reminders of the myriad ways in which this country doesn’t quite measure up to the standard set by its massive ally to the West. Whether it’s bank tellers who really do want to help you, or the ability to walk into restaurants in New York or Los Angeles without getting wanded, or even more substantial matters like America’s impressive democracy, the danger of jealousy lurks virtually everywhere. Usually, I think I’m reasonably successful at avoiding that trap. (I’ll confess to taking some comfort from people like Governor Rod Blagojevich, who reminds me that we’re not the only country with scoundrels in high positions, ...

By pure coincidence, I happened to be in my old Los Angeles neighborhood on Election Day, and like many others, I found the extraordinary power of that day difficult to articulate. At the polling places in which I'd often voted, but had never waited in line, there were lines around the block. Friends who had voted regularly with no more than a mild sense of civic duty now spoke of participating in a moment that - whether they themselves had voted for Obama or McCain - they'd long remember and would tell their grandchildren about. For me, the tears that flowed in Chicago's Grant Park that night were beyond moving. One need neither forgive nor forget Jesse Jackson's abhorrent comments about Jews and Israel to ...

For many of us, the image of Rose Pizem's fragile smile refuses to fade. Her tragedy, like the case of the Bat Yam mother who drowned her son, have aroused painful conversations as to whether we're doing enough to give our children the lives they deserve. We suspect we're not. We're right that we're not, but for the wrong reasons. Even the most decent societies occasionally produce pathologically sick parents. Sadly, horrific stories like these, no matter how vigilant we may become, are to an extent inevitable and unpreventable. Not so, however, with a much more basic injustice that we're doing to the young people of this country. That injustice has nothing to do with child abuse or worse, murder. It has to do with ...