Author: Neta-Lee Zellweger

(JTA) — The term “pogrom” is unfortunately back in our lexicon.  Last week, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin described attacks by “a bloodthirsty Arab mob” in the mixed Jewish-Arab city of Lod as a “pogrom.” A Jewish vigilante in Lod told The Washington Post that he was defending its Jewish residents “from a pogrom.” On the […]

This article originally appeared on Alma. Don’t get me wrong, I love my “Jewish nose.” But when more and more #nosejob and #nosejobcheck videos started popping up on my TikTok For You Page, it brought back those old unwanted feelings of hating my appearance I worked so hard to overcome. I wasn’t even interacting with […]

For the sake of Zion I will not be silent, for the sake of Jerusalem I will not be still. – Isaiah 62:1 (JTA) — For the past three nights, as the rocket sirens blaring through Jerusalem forced my children and me to rush to shelter — and heralded what we now know would be a […]

(JTA) — When I was growing up in Haifa, the city’s mixed population was a steady background, often overlooked rather than noted with wonder. Jews and Arabs lived, worked and raised children side by side, at times together. As part of a secular family, I remember driving to the Arab neighborhoods to buy pita bread […]

This article first appeared on Kveller. Last night was the second time that I hugged my children in a bomb shelter. The first time was on Nov. 12, 2019. That day, I heard a siren indicating that rockets were headed to my new home in the city of Modiin, having just moved to Israel in […]

(JTA) — After Hamas launched seven missiles at Jerusalem from Gaza this week, forcing the unprecedented evacuation of the Knesset and the city’s District Court, a new escalation was inevitable. Once again, Israel’s capital is at the center of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, one intertwining religious tension between Muslims and Jews with political arm wrestling over […]

(JTA) — In Sheldon Oberman’s children’s book “The Always Prayer Shawl,” a grandfather passes on his tallit to his grandson along with the sage advice, “Some things change and some things don’t.” At public readings, Oberman wore his grandfather’s tallit, which had inspired the story. When a non-Jewish author told him that she wished she […]

(JTA) — In the coming days and weeks, there is going to be a great deal of debate – in public discussions and in private conversations – regarding whether people like me are or are not contributing to the demise of the Jewish people by virtue of our existence. I was recently ordained as a […]

(JTA) — Earlier this year, I used the findings of the Pew Research Center’s 2013 “A Portrait of American Jewry” to make projections about the future demographics of the Jewish population. I anticipated a small population increase by 2023 followed by steady decline for several decades following that — and a very sharp decrease in […]

(New York Jewish Week via JTA) — A long-awaited construction project at our Manhattan synagogue, Ansche Chesed, is about to begin. Off in the distance we can glimpse our expanded lobby with improved safety and disability access, our renewed social hall, and our comfortable and professional offices. Before we can build, we must demolish. For […]