A half-shekel donation on Purim, reading Parashat Shekalim just before Rosh Ḥodesh Adar—these practices recall the annual gift to the Tabernacle/Temple. Its origin is in the census ordered in Parashat Ki Tissa, where everyone was counted by giving a half-shekel. Why? This is not a donation but a “ransom” intended to save the donor from […]
BACKGROUND – TALKING POINTS – ACTIONS – VOICES – STORIES See our “Dispelling Falsehoods, Stating Facts” section to help address difficult questions about the conflict. Communities in northern Israel are virtually ghost towns, while the world’s attention is focused on the war in Gaza. Those towns in the north mirror the villages near Gaza that […]
MERCAZ USA Executive Director Sarrae Crane has been in Israel for the last week and a half on the annual mission of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. She shares her thoughts about what she has seen and heard with us in this video message:
BACKGROUND – TALKING POINTS – ACTIONS – STORIES – PHOTOS IN THE NEWS See our “Dispelling Falsehoods, Stating Facts” section to help address difficult questions about the conflict. The murderous 10/7 terrorist attack was executed with ruthless precision, designed to maximize casualties, kidnap civilians – including children – and instill fear in the Israeli population. […]
… Anti-Jewish Attacks Masked as Anti-Zionism Spread Worldwide BACKGROUND – TALKING POINTS – ACTIONS – VOICES – STORIES – PHOTOS IN THE NEWS See our expanded “Dispelling Falsehoods, Stating Facts” section to help address difficult questions about the conflict Relieved Israelis applauded the safe return of two Israeli civilians in a heroic commando rescue […]
by Rabbi Alan Silverstein, PhD What, according to international law, is “occupation”? Land acquired as the result of an unjust warfare — a war of aggression — is characterized as “occupied territory.” This has been the case in China’s conquest and continued occupation of Tibet since 1950, Turkey’s conquest and occupation of one third of Cyprus since the early 1970s, and […]
BACKGROUND – TALKING POINTS – ACTIONS TO CONSIDER – VOICES – STORIES MAKING NEWS Pro-Palestinian and even pro-Hamas marches on university campuses and new reports of students harassing Jewish students at K-12 schools across the country are increasing at an alarming rate. The ADL has registered hundreds of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel attacks in public and […]
by Rabbi Alan Silverstein, PhD Thirty years ago, in his book “A Place Among the Nations,” Bibi Netanyahu observed that even beyond its army, its technological advances, and its service to global humanitarian causes, “Israel’s great shield … was its moral stature.” Natan Sharansky noted that Israel’s enemies have sought to erode its moral stature […]
BACKGROUND – TALKING POINTS – ACTIONS – VOICES – STORIES – PHOTOS IN THE NEWS The United Nations has a decades-long track record of bashing Israel and using the Jewish state as the scapegoat for the world’s problems. Recent headlines: UN Palestinian employees were among the terrorists during the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks The U.S., […]
by Rabbi Alan Silverstein, PhD A popular canard leveled against Israel and Zionism is that of allegedly being rooted in “settler-colonialism.” Rabbi Bradley Artson, dean and vice-president of Conservative Judaism’s Ziegler School of Rabbinical Studies, posted a blog entry, in which he lamented: “This week I have been inundated by hateful and violent antisemitic email […]