President Barack Obama is looking to regain momentum against Republican nominee Mitt Romney at tonight’s debate, but a leading expert says that on Israel, at least, very few differences between the two candidates will emerge as the two prepare … Continue reading → . Read More »

by Natalie Buchbinder Former Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter, the son of a Jewish immigrant from Ukraine, died Sunday at age 82 after a battle with non-Hodgkins lymphoma. Specter’s 30-year senate career, lasting from 1981 until 2011, earned him the title … Continue reading → . Read More »

A new group of students is cropping up as the latest champions of the Yiddish language: Israeli Arabs at Middle Eastern universities. A quarter of Bar Ilan University’s 400 students studying Yiddish are Arab, Israeli paper Yedioth Ahronoth reports. Yusuf … Continue reading → . Read More »

by Natalie Buchbinder If there were one word mezzo-soprano opera singer Laurie Rubin would use to describe her career, it would be “rollercoaster.” “You get a lot of people telling you you’re great, and a lot of people telling you … Continue reading → . Read More »

Voting in a national election causes anxiety and a spike in stress hormones, a new Israeli study has found. Levels of cortisol – a hormone secreted in times of stress to help the body cope with perceived threats — were three … Continue reading → . Read More »

by Natalie Buchbinder For voters in California’s newly redrawn 30th district, the election for a congressional representative has turned into a showdown between Jewish Democrats–with a twist. Under California’s new top-two finisher primary system, the top two vote-gathering candidates in … Continue reading → . Read More »

Saturday night I got to shepp a little nachas when Moment swept the Religion Newswriters Association awards ceremony, winning first place for Overall Excellence as well as three other honors. In addition to the award for overall excellence, the magazine … Continue reading → . Read More »

Houda Ezra Nonoo, Ambassador of Bahrain to the US, and the first Jewish ambassador posted abroad by an Arab country, is scheduled to headline the annual conference of the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA) outside Washington … Continue reading → . Read More »

More than half of Moment readers say Ayn Rand’s ideas have no place in politics today, according to a reader survey. Rand, the Jewish author and philosopher born Alisa Rosenbaum, is said to have influenced Republican vice presidential nominee Paul … Continue reading → . Read More »

One in five adults in the United States—and one in three adults under the age of 30—do not identify with any religious tradition, a new study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life shows, marking a noticeable growth … Continue reading → . Read More »

By Daphna Berman Some 1,500 pastors are expected to publicly endorse political candidates and openly violate IRS law this coming weekend as part of Pulpit Freedom Sunday. The brainchild of the Christian group Alliance Defending Freedom, the public effort is … Continue reading → . Read More »

A Holocaust survivor led a Los Angeles protest in front of meat-processing plant where some 1.5 million pigs are slaughtered annually, in a move he says was influenced by his experiences in the Warsaw ghetto. Alex Hershaft, founder of … Continue reading → . Read More »

by Natalie Buchbinder It’s tough to make a horrific event that happened over 70 years ago relevant to young people. It’s the struggle that Holocaust museums and March of the Living tours to concentration camps have attempted to address. A … Continue reading → . Read More »

Tonight’s debate is unlikely to sway Jewish voters or even directly appeal to them, a leading expert on American Jewish voting trends told In the Moment. “Partisans come to a debate with preset expectations and most Jews are partisans,” said … Continue reading → . Read More »

By Nadine Epstein Last evening, I attended the world premiere of Atlas Shrugged, Part Two, at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, DC, attended by the glitterati of the libertarian world. Spotted in the crowd were Grover Norquist, Matt Kibbe … Continue reading → . Read More »

Mayim Bialik is speaking out about the benefits of a meat-free diet in a new ad for PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). Bialik, star of “The Big Bang Theory” and a longtime vegan, says much of the … Continue reading → . Read More »

The new election-year video making the online rounds features Samuel L. Jackson exhorting less-than-active Obama supporters to “wake the f*** up,” and is sponsored by the Jewish Council for Education and Research. Based on the famously suave–and often profane–Jackson’s audio … Continue reading → . Read More »

by Natalie Buchbinder France’s war on religion continued last month, as far-right French politician and leader of the Front National Party Marine Le Pen announced her support for a ban on religious headwear in public. The ban, which Le Pen … Continue reading → . Read More »

The contentious debate over Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his actions during the Holocaust is ongoing. There are those who argue that FDR was a friend to the Jews who the led United States to victory against the Nazis; others say … Continue reading → . Read More »

The Republican Jewish Coalition is giving away iPads to volunteers who rack up enough phone banking hours ahead of the November elections. For 50 hours of phone time, volunteers will get the $599 iPad 3 and for 40 hours, they’re … Continue reading → . Read More »

More than three quarters of Jewish Israelis are dissatisfied with government policies on religion, while 67% believe that the country’s ultra-Orthodox are driving a wedge between the general public and Judaism, according to a recently released study. The public opinion … Continue reading → . Read More »

A legal battle over kosher food for Jewish prisoners in Texas begins Monday. Max Moussazadeh, a Persian Jew who was convicted of murder in 1998 and was originally sentenced to 75 years in prison, says that withholding kosher food is … Continue reading → . Read More »

National Shtetl Radio? That’s the lineage that David Brooks imagined for himself and Robert Siegel–newly discovered by Moment to have genetic ties that might make them fourth cousins–last week on NPR’s “All Things Considered.” What kind of shows would NSR … Continue reading → . Read More »

As Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visits New York this week for the UN General Assembly, the question of Iran and what the United States and Israel should do is on everyone’s minds. Here’s a roundup of opinions on both sides … Continue reading → . Read More »

By Martin Berman-Gorvine Contemporary poetry on Jewish religious subjects is rare in America outside the pages of specialized Jewish publications. Thus, Peg Duthie’s delightful new collection Measured Extravagance (Upper Rubber Boot Books) is doubly welcome. Full disclosure: Peg and I … Continue reading → . Read More »

by Daniela Enriquez Tunisia is at the edge of a new era. The next few months will be decisive for the future of the country and its inhabitants: Will it be the paragon of the Arab Spring, which it initiated, … Continue reading → . Read More »

New research has unearthed conversations among German POWs during World War II–recorded by British intelligence–that reveals the extent to which some German soldiers knew about the slaughter of Jews. In Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing, and Dying, authors Sonke Neitzel and … Continue reading → . Read More »

by Natalie Buchbinder When you think of religious restriction, what country comes to mind? Visions of the Middle East, North Africa, portions of the East? What about the United States? Israel? Both saw a rise in their restrictions against religion … Continue reading → . Read More »

by Ori Nir I have never thought of my father as a revolutionary. But since his death last month, several of his colleagues depicted him as such and helped me better appreciate some of his professional accomplishments, which I had … Continue reading → . Read More »

“Homeland,” the cable television drama about prisoners of war based on the Israeli series “Hatufim” won the coveted “best drama series” award at the Emmy Awards in Los Angeles yesterday. Creator of both shows, the Israeli Gideon Raff won an … Continue reading → . Read More »

Sarah Silverman is taking on voter ID laws with a new 2012 election video, Let My People Vote. Her 2008 video, “The Great Schlep,” in which the foul-mouthed Jewish comic tried to convince young Jews to travel to Florida to convince … Continue reading → . Read More »

Florida’s Palm Beach County has long been considered a bastion of liberalism, but the now-infamous $50,000-a-plate Romney fundraiser hosted by Jewish private equity titan Marc Leder—in which the former governor said that 47 percent of Americans “believe that they are … Continue reading → . Read More »

Sixty-nine percent of Jewish voters in Florida say they will vote for President Obama in November, down from the 76 percent of the Florida Jewish vote that Obama captured four years ago. Just a quarter, meanwhile, said they would vote … Continue reading → . Read More »

The Da Vinci Code—which popularized the notion that Jesus was married—is back in the news with the discovery of a fourth century papyrus text written in Coptic that refers to “Jesus’ wife.” But scholars say that the discovery does little … Continue reading → . Read More »

INDEPENDENT Democracy is not a Jewish idea. In fact, it falls short of the Jewish idea. We unanimously accepted the guidance of Torah at Sinai (Exodus 24: 3 and 7) and committed ourselves to its system of social, economic and national law—thus, democracy. Read More »

The Republicans, to their everlasting disgrace, have made Israel a wedge issue, reversing decades of political bipartisanship by casting President Obama as inadequately supportive of the Jewish state. Read More »

A plaque at the entrance to Istanbul’s Jewish Museum bears a series of statements in which five successive leaders of the Turkish Republic—from its aggressively secular founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1923 up through 1997—declare appreciation and support for the country’s Jews. Read More »

If opinion polls on religion and politics are accurate, the American public reached a turning point last March, in the heat of the Republican primaries. Read More »

The religious right insists that the United States was founded as a Christian nation based on biblical principles. A chief obstacle to this claim is Thomas Jefferson, the most eloquent champion among the founding fathers of strict separation of church and state. Read More »

By Martin Berman-Gorvine Janice Weizman’s The Wayward Moonmarks a refreshing departure in the Jewish historical novel, which is all too prone to focus on a limited range of well-known subjects and the theme of Jewish victimization. The setting in the … Continue reading → . Read More »

by Julia Glauberman The 19th-century historian Thomas Carlyle famously claimed that “the history of the world is but the biography of great men.” While many historians have since disagreed, Michael R. Cohen seems to have taken Carlyle’s assertion to heart … Continue reading → . Read More »

by Kara A. Kaufman As The New York Times reported last month, Jewish laws and customs regarding the environment can affect everything from when to let lands lie fallow to where to build a staircase. To better understand the role … Continue reading → . Read More »

by Daniela Enriquez As the men entered in capsule-shaped cubicles, images started to appear across the entirety of the stage-wide screen—all present felt transplanted to a wild forest, surrounded by brownish mushrooms as tall as trees. No, it’s not the … Continue reading → . Read More »

By Rebecca Borison For 15 minutes, a group of boys lived their dream. These boys met their idols and played soccer during the half-time break of a game between Los Angeles Galaxy and Real Madrid. And after the game, those … Continue reading → . Read More »

It is a cold night in Washington, DC, and Natan Sharansky is doing what he has done for years, speaking to a group of American Jews, this time participants in a Reform movement conference. Read More »

by Sarah Breger On Monday, at least 5,000 round-trip tickets to Israel from New York on El Al airlines were sold for under $400 (tickets usually cost $1,600). It turns out that the price was a mistake due to a … Continue reading → . Read More »

by Daniela Enriquez One of the obstacles Orthodox women face is finding a good “kosher” fashion line, that is wearable and respectful of tradition. Designer Marina Rahlin is easing the sartorial woes of Orthodox women with MaRa, her line of … Continue reading → . Read More »

by Daniela Enriquez According to halacha, Jewish law, there are 613 mitzvot that a Jew should fulfill during a lifetime. Some of these are daily duties, like the recitation of the Shema; some involve the relationship between a single Jew … Continue reading → . Read More »

by Rebecca Borison Most companies today are struggling to boost sales and make a profit. Some may try to broaden their customer base or find a niche product. And some have simply been banking on the ultra-Orthodox. The New York … Continue reading → . Read More »

By Rebecca Borison Born in Odessa in 1879, Jacob Weinberg was a talented and prolific Jewish composer, who sought to preserve and promote his Jewish heritage through his music. He is survived today by three granddaughters, and one of those … Continue reading → . Read More »

by Rebecca Borison This evening, Jews around the world will gather to celebrate finishing all of the tractates of the Talmud. Over seven years, participants have studied a page of Talmud every day, either by themselves or in group lessons, … Continue reading → . Read More »

by Daniela Enriquez A new oxymoron is born. After non-alcoholic beer and decaf coffee, the world is finally ready to welcome “highless” marijuana. Israeli scientists working at Tikkun Olam–the first and largest medical cannabis cultivator in Israel–created a new variant … Continue reading → . Read More »

by Daniela Enriquez The build-up to the Olympics is always a busy one for those participating. The athletes need to be in good shape and well prepared in order to succeed, the flag-bearers for the opening ceremony have to be … Continue reading → . Read More »

By Lily Shoulberg Growing up in New York City, I’ve always had plenty of Jewish friends, gone to public schools with significant Jewish populations, and, in turn, attended my fair share of lavish bar mitzvahs. I think most Jewish New … Continue reading → . Read More »

By Rebecca Borison For the past couple of months I’ve been mastering the skill of finding Jewish-related news. I follow the Jewish blogs and sites—Jewcy, Jewlicious, JTA—and the Israeli newspapers—JPost, Arutz Sheva, Haaretz. But my favorite articles are those found … Continue reading → . Read More »

By Daniela Enriquez Elections are around the corner and once again the question presents itself—are Jews by nature Democrats? That American Jews tend to lean left is not news. After all, 74 percent of Jews voted for President Obama in … Continue reading → . Read More »

A lone television drones on in the corner, cartoons in Arabic, no one watching. Across the sprawling, dimly lit lobby, 11 old folks sit apart, solitary sentinels against the passing of a cloudy afternoon. Read More »

To celebrate Moment’s 36th year, we are featuring the Moment Cartoon Caption Contest. In each issue, we will provide a cartoon drawn by New Yorker and Moment cartoon editor Bob Mankoff. Suggested captions for this cartoon must be submitted (below) by August 10, at momentmag.com/cartoon. Read More »

by Ellen Cassedy Waving at me from across Castle Street was Violeta, a middle-aged woman with a broad, fair face and blond hair, her solid body squeezed into a tight, fashionable jacket and matching skirt. We sat down at a … Continue reading → . Read More »