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Israel@75

Can Israel Defy History — Again?

Multiple efforts in Jewish sovereignty have self-destructed after 75 years. Can Israel defy history — again?
Rudi Weissenstein, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Rudi Weissenstein, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Dr. Mijal Bitton is a Research Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, and the Rosh Kehilla (communal leader) and co-founder of the Downtown Minyan in New York City. Mijal received a BA from Yeshiva University and earned her doctorate from New York University, where she conducted an ethnographic study of a Syrian Jewish community with a focus on developing the field of contemporary Sephardic studies in America.  She is an alumna of the

Masua Sagiv

“This week marks Yom Ha’atzmaut, our beloved Israel’s 75th birthday — the day on the Hebrew calendar when David Ben-Gurion proclaimed “the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate” by establishing a Jewish state in the land of Israel. Together with countless Jews around the world, we express our gratitude to be alive at this moment in history when the Jewish people have sovereignty and a nation to call their own.

But on this anniversary, Yom Ha’atzmaut’s special prayers and festive afternoon barbecues fail to capture the fraught feelings many of us are experiencing. Jews across the globe in all our different peculiarities and particularities — from all political orientations, religious and secular, progressive and conservative, for and against the judicial overhaul being proposed by the current government — are reeling.”

Read the full op-ed on JTA

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The End of Policy Substance in Israel Politics