Author: David Leibermann

((JEWISH REVIEW)) — Assaf Lowengart’s introduction to American baseball didn’t go well: A fan accidentally doused him in beer when his family, having relocated from Israel to Milwaukee for a year, attended a Brewers game. Then in first grade, he cried. Yet Lowengart soon caught the baseball bug, rising in the ranks of Israel’s nascent […]

Jared Genser, a Washington, D.C.-based international human rights lawyer, has extracted hostages and political prisoners from some of the world’s worst dictatorships — usually in one-off deals following years of negotiation and on a rare occasion involving large sums of money.  But he’s concerned that piecemeal dealmaking with rogue actors encourages more kidnappings. So Genser […]

((JEWISH REVIEW)) — An array of left-leaning Israeli human rights groups has called for an immediate ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war. Their statement echoed the views of some of the families of the hostages still held by Hamas. It also was a sign of the way Jewish Israelis’ virtually wall-to-wall support for the war is […]

WASHINGTON ((JEWISH REVIEW)) — As Congress debates various bills that would send emergency military aid to Israel, Jewish groups across the political spectrum have advocated for their passage.  But the push for aid ended up dividing those groups on another issue that often animates Jewish activism: immigration reform. Legacy Jewish groups parted ways over whether […]

((JEWISH REVIEW)) — An outspoken American-born rabbi and left-wing human rights activist has been charged with obstructing soldiers in the West Bank, one of whom was a far-right settler who was himself charged with a hate crime in 2015.   The indictment comes as violence has risen in the West Bank, and as the Biden administration […]

When Alon Fishman visited Israel in early January on a group trip, it wasn’t his first time in the country. But Fishman, 23, had never seen Israel like this before. When his Birthright Israel group arrived at the Western Wall, they found it uncharacteristically empty, and the plaza featured a new memorial with the names […]

((JEWISH REVIEW)) — Katie Silver had already mastered volunteering and racing to safe rooms when she hopped on another Israeli wartime trend. Silver, a pilates instructor in Jerusalem, logged onto a Facebook group called Secret Tel Aviv and announced that she was looking for love. Like many single 30-somethings, Silver had tried dating apps but […]

((JEWISH REVIEW)) — Hamas delivered a long-awaited response to an Israeli proposal for a hostage deal on Tuesday, eliciting cautious optimism from some involved in negotiations even as Israeli officials dimmed hopes about how many hostages could ultimately return alive. Israel has not responded officially to the counterproposal, which reportedly lays out a 135-day path […]

WASHINGTON ((JEWISH REVIEW)) — A bid to rush wartime emergency assistance to Israel failed in the U.S. House of Representatives, running into opposition from a trio of factions who opposed the bill for widely divergent reasons. The bill for $17.6 billion in emergency assistance needed a two-thirds majority under a special House procedure. It garnered […]

((JEWISH REVIEW)) — Argentina’s new president, Javier Milei, has traveled to Israel to fulfill his foreign policy pledges — and his own personal religious aspirations. Milei, an avowed philosemite who was elected in November, will travel with his rabbi-turned-ambassador and will meet with families of Argentinians held hostage in Gaza. Milei is the first Latin […]