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Israel at 60

No stiff upper lip as U.K. Jews celebrate Israel @ 60

The unprecedented show of pride and self-confidence by British Jews in the nation\’s first-ever Salute to Israel parades may be a sign of the transformation of a community long considered timid and low key.

Israel @ 60: Confronting denial

Each year, in preparation for Israel\’s birthday, newspaper editors feel an uncontrolled urge, a divine calling in fact, to invite Arab writers to tell us why Israel should not exist.

Tale of the ‘Stranger’ leaps from book to musical

It was 1985, and many of the Ethiopian Jews who\’d been airlifted from Sudan were being housed in a hotel in Netanya, Israel. When writer Sonia Levitin entered the temporary nursery, she was particularly struck by all the babies and toddlers who\’d been born since their families had arrived.

The transformation of Israeli food — from falafel to fennel

The 60th anniversary of the State of Israel is a good time to reflect on how this young country has progressed during its mere six decades of existence. Its economic growth, its leading role in technological advances and its presence in world affairs are all impressive, but most notable to me is the transformation of Israeli food from mundane and unknown to cutting edge and creative. Modern-day Israeli cuisine reflects ethnic, cultural, and religious diversity.

History disproves myth that founding Zionists were naive

We are often told, mostly by anti-Israel propagandists, that the early Zionists\’ attitude toward the indigenous Arab population in Palestine was laden with ignorance, naivete, denial, contempt, abuse and outright oppression. Afif Safieh, the PLO representative to the United States, tells audiences on campus after campus: \”[Palestinians] have suffered three successive denials — a denial of their mere physical existence, a denial of their national rights and, the most morally disturbing, a denied recognition of their pain and suffering.\”

Israel: A work in progress

From the birth of the Zionist movement more than a century ago through its 60 years as a Jewish state, Israel has come of age amid a vastly changing world: two world wars, the technological revolution and economic globalization with all its attendant challenges.

A birthday gift

Here we are, Jews in every corner of the world, awash in a frenzy of celebrations for Israel — all because of a birthday. And not just any birthday, mind you, but one that ends in a zero.

Hollywood-Israel link flourishing

A group of hotshot Hollywood television executives sit around a table sipping Evian water, working their cellphones and bemoaning the lack of fresh ideas for a series to pull their network out of the cellar.

What Israel means to me

Tovah Feldshuh

\n\”I love, admire, and will eternally raise money for Israel because I am well aware that she takes bullets for me. She is my life insurance.\”

\n\nJudd Hirsch

\n\”It\’s not easy to understand how a nation can reclaim itself after 5,000 years of banishment, occupation, and inhumane treatment by so many peoples of the world…

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Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.

More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.

More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.