January: To be a Jew and an American, to be so egregious to say: when I left the United States and came to Israel, I left one diaspora and entered another. I am a diaspora Jew, a landless, people-of-the-book Jew. Homelands make me nervous. But here I am in Israel. Looking up the Hebrew word “galut,” meaning diaspora, in an English-Hebrew dictionary, I see that the adjective “galuti” is translated as “ghetto-like.” I suppose that’s how Israelis like to remember the diaspora.

Human relationships are complicated because people are complicated, and politics is often complicated for the same reason: we are all complex people with different backgrounds, interests, hang-ups, desires, dislikes and beliefs. Anyone who has spent even five minutes thinking or talking about Israel, the Arab world, and the Palestinian cause inevitably comes face-to-face with these complexities, the simplifications, the oversimplifications, the value laden judgments and the hopes of what could be…

By Ruth Stevens

Hebrew graffiti in the old city of Hebron calls for death to the traitors against God, presumably including everyone on our tour and a large majority of the citizens of Israel. It’s a bright sunny day. Many of the buildings here are quite old and have beautiful Arabic inscriptions carved into their facades or wrought in their gates. Most are locked, shuttered and abandoned. It seems that living nation of Israel, am yisrael chay, has quite effectively rocked the casbah.

By David Tzam

In September of 2005 I set out to explore the world. I had finished my undergrad degree the previous April and I was determined to see as much as I could. After nearly four months and twenty-four countries in Europe I flew from Athens, Greece to Ben Gurion Airport, just outside of Tel Aviv.