How do you teach “History”? Israeli Ministry of Education apparently solved this puzzle. The solution: It’s not the contents, but rather the title, that matters. I’ve been volunteering for several months, helping small children in the age of 10 years or so with their homework from school. Many of them attend what is known as […]

Today is the Jewish “Yom Kippur”. It’s a day full of contradictions, some of which are rather odd. According to the Jewish “Halacha” (religious laws and tradition), it used to be a happy day, in which men chose women for the purpose of establishing a family. According to the same “Halacha” it is now a […]

I have often been asked how the State of Israel will look when its Haredi (ultra Orthodox) people are the majority of Jewish people. I admit this is a bit like asking for a prophecy, but in practice I can identify two conflicting trends. One trend is in favor of an increasing Haredi population and […]

Three major things differentiate ‘Israel Railways’ from most of the modern world: – The train still uses diesel fuel. – The train suffers constantly from malfunctions, accidents and worker strikes. – The service is offered only 5.5 days a week. No trains in the weekends. Those with sharp observation skills may come up with theories […]

Are most people religious or secular? In most Western countries with Christian orientation, the question itself is pretty obvious. ‘Belief in God’ for a typical American would usually be accompanied by some common Christian behaviors, and since many of these are optional, it could be translated into simple everyday habits. Nothing special that can be […]

It really pisses me off when I’m being blamed for ‘hatred’. Try to criticize religion, especially the Middle-Eastern ones. Soon you’ll find yourself as the target of various accusations, which may start with ‘hatred’ and end with ‘Anti-Semitism’ and ‘Islamofobia’. Religions are not very tolerant of criticism, and that is an understatement. The issue has […]

The Talmud says ‘Kol Be-Isha Erva’. The direct literal translation of our sages in this case reads ‘A woman’s voice is her genitals’. Luckily, the meaning is not the direct translation, but it’s almost. The meaning is ‘a woman’s singing voice induces desire, and therefore is not allowed to be heard by men’. The origins […]

The essence of any country, as I (and not necessarily others) see it, is not the ethnic composition of the population, but rather the country’s “culture”. I – and many others – very much want to preserve the “nature” of the current state of Israel in many cultural ways: Language is just one example, and […]

I often stumble upon the famous argument “Who is a Jew?” (or, rather, “What is a Jew?”). Unlike other related terms, Jewishness is used to express several very different things. In many countries of the world, there is some order in things. Let’s take Belgium for instance: You can be a Belgian citizen, while from […]

“In India, as elsewhere in our darkening world, religion is the poison in the blood. Where religion intervenes, mere innocence is no excuse. Yet we go on skating around this issue, speaking of religion in the fashionable language of ‘respect’.” — Salman Rushdie In took the Unites States ten years or more to settle the […]