The other day, I sat in on a sex education course at an Orthodox high school. The class was for seniors, the first one they had been offered on the subject; they were understandably full of questions. I realized, based upon the nature of their questions, how vital this course is.

If you search on the web for an Orthodox approach to sex education, one of the main responses goes like this: “Education teaches people how to live. If you are educated about sex, you begin to live with sex. This is not a theory. This is fact….There is an accepted view within Jewish orthodoxy that sex education should be taught when people are ready to have sex. When adults are ready to get married, they are ready to learn about sex.”

The Jewish Funders Conference opens in Tel Aviv this week with over 400 leading philanthropists from around the world. The funders gather each year to learn from each other, strengthen a network that shares a vision of engaged philanthropy, and work together to foster a culture of giving that reflects our values.

This year’s conference brings global philanthropists Sir Ronald Cohen of The Portland Trust and Dame Stephanie Shirley (U.K. Ambassador on Philanthropy) to Israel as guest speakers around a theme of “Embracing Risk: Learning from Our Mistakes.”

The breaking news from Toulouse, France, on Monday morning was tragic.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy rushed to the city north of the Pyrenees and declared, “This is a day of national tragedy because children were killed in cold blood.”

The world was horrified by the massacre of Jewish children in France, but it should not be surprised by it.

The much anticipated summit between the president of the United States and the prime minister of Israel came and went. It was a success and it was a failure. They did what they had to do and said what they needed to say.

As these two leaders began their meeting, there was tension. Frankly, they do not like each other. They are uncomfortable with each other. Most important, Barack Obama and Binyamin Netanyahu do not trust each other. You do not have to be an expert reader of body language to see it. There was clearly tension as the meeting began.

WASHINGTON – Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu referred to the Shoah in his March 5 speech at the AIPAC 2012 Policy Conference for the same reason that President Shimon Peres referred to it in his speech the day before and President Barack Obama alluded to it in his news conference the day after: In the debate over Iran’s nuclear weapons program, Auschwitz is relevant.

Peres, in his remarks about the Iran problem, described how the Nazis “forced my grandfather, together with the remaining Jews [in his village], into the wooden synagogue and set it on fire. No one survived. Not one.”

WASHINGTON – In a world where nuclear weapons soon could be in the hands of a rogue nation such as Iran, an Israeli preemptive strike on the Tehran regime’s nuclear facilities would be fully justified. Despite its ban on aggressive war, Article 51 of the United Nations Charter clearly recognizes a state’s inherent right of self-defense. Thus, Israel has full authority to act unilaterally or collectively in its self-defense.

The Jewish National Fund (JNF) plants trees, builds a nation, and unifies a people.

As a child growing up in a small town in Texas, I dropped my coins in the blue box in Hebrew school. My parents and grandparents raised me on the importance and the power of that box. My grandfather would say to me, “If only we had been stronger and more unified, we could have bought more land and had a place for six million Jews to go home to.”

Never did I think that rabbis and organizations would use this iconic symbol of our unity and success for the promotion of propaganda using politically motivated, destructive language.

As a child, I proudly brought my spare change to Hebrew school to drop in the little blue boxes. With this money, my teachers told me, the Jewish National Fund (JNF) would plant trees in Israel. I never imagined that these nickels and dimes would also help to evict Palestinians from their homes.

Last month, Rabbis for Human Rights-North America (RHR-NA) called on JNF and its partner organizations to issue a public statement that they will no longer evict Palestinians from their homes in eastern Jerusalem.