Gil Shefler
Should Israel be a model for U.S. airport security?
As U.S. officials try to figure out how to improve airport security in the aftermath of the failed Christmas Day bombing attempt on a Northwest Airlines flight to Detroit, many North Americans are looking to Israel as a model.
The New York Times opened a forum for readers to discuss the pros and cons of Israeli airport security. The Toronto Star interviewed an Israeli airport security expert who said the best way to nab terrorists is to “look them in the eye.”
David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee, wrote a piece for The Huffington Post about the lessons U.S. airport security officials can learn from their counterparts in Israel.
Israeli women oppose bus segregation
Three years ago, a 57-year-old grandmother got on a bus in Israel departing Rechovot for Givat Shmuel and sat in a vacant seat in the front.
Shortly after taking her seat, the woman was approached by a fervently Orthodox man who demanded she move to the back of the bus with the rest of the women.
Unbeknownst to the woman, who asked JTA to be identified only as H., she had boarded one of the so-called mehadrin (super kosher) bus lines, on which the predominantly ultra-Orthodox, or haredi, ridership imposes sex-segregated seating. The man told H. that segregated seating had been sanctioned by the rabbis and by Egged, the state-owned bus company that operates the line.
Heroes or rabble-rousers? The real story of the Maccabees
In 165 BCE, a group of warriors led by Judah Maccabee and his band of brothers ushered in a new era in Jewish history when they routed the soldiers of the Greek-Syrian empire and rededicated the Holy Temple in Jerusalem.
That victory, and the miracle of the menorah that followed, is celebrated every year by Jews around the world at Chanukah.
But if the same thing had happened today, would contemporary Jews hail the Maccabees as heroes?
The place in Jewish history of the Maccabees — a nickname for the first members of the Hasmonean dynasty that ruled an autonomous Jewish kingdom — is much more complex than their popular image might suggest.
Maccabees still making news
Some 2,200 years after the Maccabees’ revolt, historians and archeologists are uncovering new information about their era.
This year’s biggest discovery is a correspondence between Seleukes IV, whose brother and heir was Antiochus IV Epiphanes of the Chanukah story, and one of Seleukes’ chiefs in Judea, found on parts of an ancient stele.
Prof. Dov Gera of Ben-Gurion University, who studied the stone’s inscription, said it confirms the account by the Jewish historian Josephus regarding the tightening grip of the Greek-Syrian empire over its subjects’ religious practices.
Jewish support for Israeli-Arab causes goes mainstream, irking some
When the Reform movement passed a resolution endorsing advocacy for Israeli Arabs, it wasn’t the first time an American Jewish group had backed the cause of Israeli-Arab equality.
In recent years, a growing number of American Jews have thrown their support toward Israeli-Arab causes, including civil rights and advocacy organizations, women’s empowerment courses, student-exchange programs, and even film festivals.
More than 80 Jewish groups belong to the Inter-Agency Task Force on Israeli-Arab Issues, which works on behalf of equal treatment of Israeli Arabs and Jews.
The Jewish federations’ Venture Fund for Jewish and Arab Equality and Shared Society, a mix of 21 private family foundations, federations, and philanthropists, has raised more than $1 million for Israeli-Arab causes since its launch in 2007. And in 2006, the Jewish Agency for Israel announced it would invest in projects benefiting Israeli Arabs, scrapping a policy, in place since its founding in 1922, of exclusively helping Jewish causes.
