The Sunny Side of the Wall

  After Israel’s most recent election, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—you may remember him—has ended Israel’s political deadlock in the opinion of Times of Israel blogger Sheldon Kirshner. Netanyahu and his coalition secured 64 of the Knesset’s 120...

  Shanah tovah! It’s time once again in Israel and the world to celebrate the birthday of the universe, the day that G-d created Adam and Eve and Rosh Hashanah, the “head” of the Jewish New Year. On the morning following sundown on the eve of Tishrei 1 (September...

  Marcia and I only recently began to reengage with ordinary life here in Israel, roughly two years after this country began its experiment with Covid-19, its new and highly-regarded therapies and its legion of mutated cousins, the bugs, you’ll remember, that...

Tourism along the Sinai Peninsula’s Gulf of Aqaba coastline has staged a post-COVID revival of sorts thanks in large part to hordes of Israeli Jews headed in the (historically) wrong direction. This Passover, for example, roughly 3,500 years after leaving en masse,...

  Whoever oversees such things in our part of Jerusalem recently began demolition of two iconic traffic circles in our neighborhood. Iconic in the sense that nearly everyone who lives in the area has risked his or her life on them. The circles connect to each...

  A good friend in the States recently reached out and asked me the seemingly innocent question, “What’s up in Israel?” But, in the age of Corona, any inquiry about events in the Land often leads to contention. Politics, religion, Corona. The primary source of...

  2020 may have been the first year since the advent of modern Israel, perhaps since the days of Nehemiah, that Israeli Jews were not allowed to celebrate Sukkot as their hearts desired. “We cannot all be under the sukkah together this year,” blogged The Times of...

Early Sunday afternoon, the light streaming through the window beside my desk changed from a common, pale blue to an eerie golden glow. The Jerusalem Fire of ’21 was about to introduce itself.

  In Israel, it’s a good idea to get out of the house as least as often as we hold national elections. An opportunity to do so arose for my wife Marcia recently between outbreaks of COVID variants, and she went shopping with a friend. I won’t pretend to...

  A friend, call him Reuben, rang us up from Ashdod a few days ago. Ordinarily, receiving a phone call from 30 miles away would seem unexceptional, but Ashdod was under attack at the time. Hundreds of Hamas missiles had fallen in and around his hometown when...