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Mar. 15, 2021
On June 12, 1995, Quebec held a referendum on independence from Canada. The No vote was 50.58 percent and 49.42 percent voted Yes.
Imagine there had been a swing of three-quarters of a percent, and Quebec had become a sovereign state with a population of eight million people, about 80 percent of whom were French-speaking Roman Catholics – most of whom fancied themselves the true Quebecois – founding the only overwhelmingly Catholic commonwealth in North America.
Israel's Law of Return entrenches Jewish exceptionalism, suffocates democracy and empowers a grotesquely theocratic and discriminatory view of citizenship. American Jews should oppose it
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Mar. 4, 2021
If I had to distill into one word my reaction to Jotam Confino’s piece in Haaretz ( Immigrating to Israel Made Me Renounce Judaism ) where he recounts how Israel s immigration system challenged and cancelled his Jewish identity, that word would be: Duh!
Don’t get me wrong: I can totally relate to Confino’s ordeal, and I feel deep empathy for him. But precisely because I can relate so strongly, this is the word I would use. What Confino eloquently and passionately describes has been the reality for decades for hundreds of thousands of Russian-speaking non-Jews in Israel, myself included.
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Mar. 3, 2021
For years, Erika Belovai has dreamed of opening her own bakery in Israel. But residing in the country on a volatile immigrant visa, she knew it was not a realistic option. A High Court decision on Monday changed her fate: She was finally eligible for Israeli citizenship.
“I started to cry like a baby, I couldn’t stop,” she told Haaretz Wednesday, recalling the moment she heard the news.
The High Court had ruled that the state must recognize non-Orthodox conversions performed in Israel for the sake of immigration, a verdict that came after a 16 year battle. It began in 2005 when the Israel Religious Action Center – the advocacy arm of the Reform movement in the country – petitioned the High Court.