Author: Neta-Lee Zellweger

The world moves so fast that what seemed groundbreaking just a week ago already feels like a distant memory. Last Friday, I arrived back home after leading the first solidarity mission of Jewish leaders from North America to arrive in Israel following Operation Guardian of the Walls and the year and a half of the […]

This article originally appeared on The New York Jewish Week. Just a few weeks ago, the streets of New York City were filled with thousands of people shouting “intifada” while also claiming “Black Lives Matter.” In that same period, a violent pro-Palestinian mob attacked Jews on the streets of New York. Others violently assaulted Jews […]

(JTA) — My grandpa once told me a story about when my great-grandparents were on a steamship emigrating from Ukraine to Cuba in the 1920s, shortly before my grandpa was born. As the story went, my great-grandmother saw a Black man for the first time and she screamed and hid.  My grandpa told the story […]

(New York Jewish Week via JTA) — In the 1960s, the Communist Party cut the Russian Jews off from the Jewish people. They prohibited them from wearing tefillin, or celebrating b’nai mitzvah, or expressing support for the State of Israel. They intimidated and imprisoned them. And the Communist Party governed with one big antisemitic lie: […]

(JTA) — “Rabbi Adar, is it dangerous to wear my Jewish star?”  In 12 years of teaching “Introduction to the Jewish Experience” through HaMaqom|The Place in the San Francisco Bay Area, no student ever asked me that question in those words. This year three students have asked it of me. The first student who asked […]

(JTA) — It has been a traumatic time for world Jewry. If violence in Gaza and Israel were not bad enough, the fallout from the conflict has spurred physical attacks on Jews, vandalism and antisemitic rhetoric. The antisemitism this time has not been perpetrated by neo-Nazis and white nationalists but by elements of the left […]

This article originally appeared on Kveller. Obviously these past few weeks have been difficult for so many people, mainly the Palestinians and Israelis who have been enmeshed in conflict and under fire. Thankfully there’s now a cease-fire that everyone hopes will hold — but the aftermath of the conflict lingers. I’m not Israeli and I’m not […]

(JTA) — I was riding my bike last week when I passed a convoy of honking cars sporting Israeli flags and balloons in various shades of blue and white — and immediately felt a wave of clashing emotions. I felt the pang of recognition I feel whenever I see the flag that dotted the walls of my […]

(JTA) — The cease-fire agreement announced last week between Israel and Hamas conjures up the wisdom often, if dubiously, attributed to Albert Einstein: “If you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got.” Unfortunately, ever since the Israeli government withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005 with the naive […]

(New York Jewish Week via JTA) — The Pew Research Center’s latest study of American Jews came out last week, with few bombshells. That’s probably because the study confirms what anyone paying close attention has probably already suspected. For example, the study felt right to me in its description of the most rapidly growing cohorts of […]