the promised podcast

“Being Mayor is Tough!”

13.5% of city council members in Israel are women. 2% of mayors are. Why is it so damn hard for women to advance in local politics?

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Barak, Bezalel and Bennett and the Red Bellheifer

A former Prime Minister, a present Minister of Education and an MK argue about whether Israel’s modern orthodox Jews are quickly becoming more moderate or quickly becoming more fanatical. Who is right?

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Book Learnin’

The Palestinian Authority publishes its first new schoolbooks in 18 years, and they contain scorched-earth rejection of Jewish presence in Palestine, so much so that the European Union cut Palestinian aid by 15 million Euros. How understanding ought we be of this pedagogy of rage?

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Israel, Encapsulated

What six items should we pack into a Voyager-Spacecraft sort of time-capsule, to teach eager aliens all they need to know about Earth’s only Jewish State. (And, no, BDS has not yet reached the outer atmosphere.)

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The Hebrew Innoversity

The Hebrew University makes all students – physicists, poets and philosophers – take a course on “entrepreneurship and innovation,” so students will find their way in a gig-economy in a high-tech nation. Is the notion of learning-for-its-own-sake dying before our eyes?

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Let them play X-Box!, or, The End of the People’s Army?

The IDF plans to draft some for eight years, others for one year, others not at all: Is it finally really time to stick a fork in the notion of a “People’s Army”?

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“A New Chapter in the Sad Book of Our Lives”: The Oslo Accords at 25

25 years ago this week, Yitzhak Rabin, Yassir Arafat and Bill Clinton gathered on the White House Lawn and made us believe that maybe a century of Palestinian-Jewish enmity was ending. What do we make of that unfulfilled hope, a quarter of a century later?

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Reflecting Back on 5778

As a new year begins, we ask, what were the most important people and events of the tired, waning year limping to a close?

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Home is Where the Homework Is

The number of homeschooled Israeli kids increases 1,150% in ten years. What the hell is going on?

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