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Moment

Articles from Vol. 37, No. 1, January-February

A Case of Arab Democracy: The Pursuit of Equal Rights by Israel's Arabs Is Challenging the Jewish Character of the State. Moment Explores the Tensions at the Heart of the Political Relationship between Arabs and Jews
Knesset member Ahmad Tibi's office is stifling. The thermostat is broken, and the air-conditioning in the new wing of the Israeli parliament refuses to kick in. Tibi, a legislator in his fourth term in the house, is hot and impatient. His eyes wander...
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Cholent: The Truest of All Jewish Foods
Proust had his madeleine, the buttery, tea-moistened crumbs that brought back a torrent of childhood memories for the narrator of In Search of Lost Time. German poet Heinrich Heine, known for his complicated relationship with Judaism, had cholent,...
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Crying for Jean Valjean
At some point, when I was a student at the Iowa Writers' Workshop five years ago, my classmates started referring to me as "the writer who ends his stories with a hug." It could have been a devastating critique. But I never took it that way. It...
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From the Editor
My mother, Ruth Epstein, now nearly 87, worked her way up from volunteer to executive director at our Jewish Community Center in Deal, New Jersey. A brilliant, intuitive woman with four children and two degrees, she founded the youth employment program,...
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High Stakes for Church and State Separation
The outcome of the presidential election could have a huge impact on the Supreme Court's a huge impact on the Supreme Court's approach to issues of church and state. Of all the issues that could be significant in the 2012 presidential election,...
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Israel's Democracy Needs Your Help: New Laws Are Gnawing Away at the Rights of Israel's Arab Citizens
One bill in the Knesset is aimed at keeping human rights groups from filing suit before Israel's Supreme Court. Another would bar mosques from using loud-speakers for the call to prayer; the supposed ban on noise pollution says nothing of church bells,...
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Miss Holocaust 1945
Hope: A Tragedy Shalom Auslander Riverhead Books 2012, $26.95, pp. 304 "While there's never a good time to find Anne Frank in your attic, this was a particularly bad time." What we have right there, folks, is Existentialist dead-pan....
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New Israel Elections Are around the Corner: As of Now, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Is Poised for a Big Win
Elections are in the air--and not just in the United States. In December, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for early primaries in his Likud Party, a likely indicator that he may dissolve the Knesset sometime in 2012 and call a general...
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Oscar's Jewish Past: In Honor of the Academy Awards, Moment Looks Back at Some "Jewish" Best Picture Winners of Yesteryear
* Gentleman's Agreement (1947) The dashing Gregory Peck built his career around playing men of principle and conviction; To Kill a Mockingbird's Atticus Finch, after all, is a paragon of justice and courage. In Gentleman's Agreement, directed by...
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Proud and Prickly with a Soft Heart
Muscular. Courageous. Bronzed. The stereotype of the sun-kissed sabra is Ari ben Canaan, as played by actor Paul Newman in the 1960 movie Exodus. The word sabra stems from the name of the prickly pear cactus--tzabar in Hebrew and sabr in Arabic--whose...
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That Great Big Jewish Land: The 49th State Was Built by Jewish People, Jewish Money and Jewish Know-How. and Although Their Numbers Are Small, Jews Are Still Disproportionately Prominent in Commercial and Public Life
In 1938, as the Nazis laid plans to annihilate European Jewry, a few desperate Jews dreamed of escaping to the other side of the world: Alaska. Joachim Hein, from Breslau, Germany, was one of many who wrote to the American Department of Interior for...
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The Bag Lady Park of Avenue
The triple-level, double penthouse on Park Avenue in Manhattan has been on the market for two years, with a price tag of $5.5 million. "Have you come for the open house?" the butler asks when I arrive, and looks disappointed when I shake my head. The...
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The Days of Wine and Rabbis
Jews and Booze: Becoming American in the Age of Prohibition Marni Davis. Illustrated. New York University Press. 2012, $32, pp. 272 Prohibition is hot. Why this is so, eight decades after the end of America's failed "Great Experiment,"...
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The Heretic Hebrew
A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza's Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age Steven Nadler Princeton University Press 2011, $29.95, pp. 304 As citizens of a liberal democracy, we take for granted that priests and rabbis cannot...
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The Past Imperfect
The Street Sweeper Elliot Perlman Riverhead Books 2012, $28.95, pp. 624 The Holocaust not only defies the laws of humanity and reason, it contradicts the rules of physics. Instead of diminishing with the years, that monstrous crime increases...
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Two Bat Mitzvahs, 60 Years Apart: Once an Afterthought, Bat Mitzvahs Have Become a Significant Religious Moment
Not long ago, my eldest granddaughter celebrated her bat mitzvah--two months shy of 60 years after I celebrated mine. I was one of the first girls in Conservative Judaism permitted the "privilege" of the supposed equivalent of the male coming-of-age...
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What Does It Mean to Be Pro-Israel Today?
Independent Being pro-Israel today means being ever so cautious about what you read in the biased media about Israel. At the same time, it also means being ever so cautious about turning a blind eye to what is going on in Israel. I am a staunch...
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What Does It Mean to Be Pro Israel Today? a Moment Symposium
DAVID K. SHIPLER It seems obvious to say that being pro-Israel means supporting Israel's survival, security and well-being as a just and prosperous society. Nobody would disagree. Where people part company is over how best to achieve those goals:...
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Why Jews Can't Criticize Sharia Law: Like Jewish Law, Islamic Law Is Worthy of Protection in the United States
Similarities between Judaism and Islam are easy to see. Both are monotheistic religions for whom the Lord is One. Both are religions based on revelation. In both, law is central, and personal and social existence is governed by a divinely ordained...
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Young Hollywood Hotshots
ACROSS 1 Call from the crib 5 Challah ingredient 8 " __ boom bah!" 11 Exist 14 Non-PC buy 15 See 7-Down 17 Cause of an immune reponse 19 Canadian-born comic actor who starred in "The Green Hornet" 21 Former "60 Minutes" regular...
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