religion

Protesters argue with worshippers affiliated with the Rosh Yehudi organization over gender-segregated prayer on Yom Kippur in Dizengoff Square, Tel Aviv, September 25, 2023. (Oren Ziv)

A clash over gender segregation reveals the blindness of Israel’s protest leaders

On the religionization of public space, as with the occupation, the leaders of the anti-government protests are out of step with many taking to the streets.

By Oren Ziv September 29, 2023

Martin Buber and Rabbi Binyamin, founders of the bi-national Brit Shalom movement, seen in Palestine. (Central Zionist Archives)

The Haredi Zionist who advocated radical openness

From the Jewish diaspora to the Palestinians, R. Binyamin's ideas show how alternatives to mainstream Zionism were imagined even in its earliest days.

By Tom Pessah September 27, 2023

Netanyahu supporters hold a counter-protest to the mass demonstrations against the far-right government and its judicial overhaul, Tel Aviv, March 18, 2023. (Erik Marmor/Flash90)

In the looming civil war, the Israeli right has the upper hand

While the government can rely on national-religious identity to mobilize supporters, the opposition’s counternarrative suffers a serious weakness.

By Menachem Klein July 24, 2023

Latest

Protest against the Israeli government’s plans for judicial overhaul, Washington Square Park, New York, April 2, 2023. (Gili Getz)

Why are American Jews so shocked by Israel’s far-right turn?

Israel's electorate is forcing U.S. Jews to grapple with the dissonance not only between liberal values and Zionism, but their understandings of Judaism itself.

By Shaul Magid April 25, 2023

Participants in the Faithful Left Conference, Jerusalem, January 23, 2023. (Gilad Kavalerchik)

A coming out party for Israel’s religious Jewish left

At a packed conference in Jerusalem, hundreds of Israel’s “faithful left” come together to talk apartheid, feminism, and religion and state.

By Yuval Abraham January 24, 2023

Thousands of Jewish students attend a ceremony marking the end of "Shnat Shmita", in the Israeli settlement of Efrat, in Gush Etzion, October 2, 2022. (Gershon Elinson/Flash90)

Religious Zionists have captured the state. What will it mean for Palestinians?

Unlike Israeli Jews, who are opposing the government to protect the status quo, Palestinians across the Green Line are fighting a more existential danger.

By Ameer Makhoul January 22, 2023

Religious IDF Israeli soldiers pray during a training of the Ultra Orthodox Unit at the Givati Brigade near the Israeli city of Beit Shemesh, September 27, 2017. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Can religious Zionism overcome its addiction to state power?

A new book tries to salvage a religious ideology used to justify a violent secular state. But the messianic belief in power is a hard drug to abandon.

By Shaul Magid November 10, 2021

Illustrative photo of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish man walking past an Arab shopkeeper in the Old City of Jerusalem. (Gil Yaari/Flash90)

Seeing the ‘other’ on Yom Kippur, in Jerusalem

On Yom Kippur in 1967, the Year of Forgetting, I put on my dark holiday clothes and walked to the Old City of Jerusalem. For a long time I stood in front of an Arab’s hole-in-the-wall shop, not far from the Damascus Gate, a shop with buttons and zippers and spools of thread in every…

By Orly Noy October 11, 2016

My community did not include brothers of, parents of, or children of celebrities or political activists who went out to change the world. I was just another Mizrahi girl in the heart of the consensus. (Illustrative photo by Activestills.org)

Being a Mizrahi woman in the Left

My leftism is beyond the establishment, and it stems first and foremost from my experiences as an outsider. By Netta Amar-Shiff I grew up in a house that was mostly involved in maintaining family unity and keeping the mitzvot, all within the geographical radius of my home, my synagogue, and my school. Although I never…

By +972 Magazine January 31, 2016

A religious Israeli man carries an M-16 rifle as he walks near the separation barrier surrounding Rachel's Tomb, Bethlehem, West Bank. (photo: Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)

Is religion an obstacle to Israeli-Palestinian peace?

Pew publishes surprising new data on religion in Israel, Palestine and the region. We often hear that Israelis and Palestinians are more religious than other national groups, or at the very least are becoming more religious. This, they claim, makes any solution to the conflict more difficult to reach. A new Pew Research Center report…

By Noam Sheizaf December 25, 2015

Zionist Camp supporters listen to exit poll results, Tel Aviv, March 17, 2015. (Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)

Beyond Netanyahu: On the collapse of the so-called Left

Many in the Israeli Left saw the recent election defeat as a danger to democracy. But if the Left wants to win elections, it needs to let go of its anti-Mizrahi fear-mongering and racism. by Elad Ben Elul (translated by Joshua Tartakovsky) In order to understand the outcome of the recent elections in Israel, one…

By Haokets March 27, 2015

Illustrative photo of a man wearing an Israeli flag at the Western Wall. (By Shutterstock.com / Robert Hoetink)

Does Israel have a place in Jewish identity?

The proposed ‘Nation-State Law’ and a wave of violence point to the urgency of questioning Israel’s place in Jewish identity. Shlomo Sand’s latest book, ‘How I Stopped Being a Jew,’ offers a starting point for such a discussion. When I left Palestine this summer, I was relieved to leave the Israeli flag behind. No more…

By Mya Guarnieri Jaradat December 1, 2014

A resident of Safed praying. (Photo: GPO)

Have you murdered and also taken possession?

First the moderate Judaism of Mizrahi Jews was trampled and some of them were pushed into an extreme orthodox practice that originated in Europe. Then the Mizrahi Jews were blamed for Ashkenazi-originated orthodoxy, and now MK Ruth Calderon reinvents moderate Judaism as if none of this has ever happened. By Avraham H. Muthada (Translated from…

By Haokets October 19, 2013