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“My girlfriend and I are Russian revolutionists and freethinkers, but our parents want us to have a religious wedding—what should we do?” “Should I marry a woman with a dimple in her chin, when everyone says that people with dimples in their chins will lose their first husband or wife?” “I was a prosperous businessman in Warsaw, but I have not managed to succeed in America; should I go back to Warsaw?” These are just some of the hundreds of questions printed by the Yiddish newspaper Forverts (פֿאָרווערטס‎) in its advice column, A Bintel Brief (אַ בינטל בריוו, A Bundle[�]

“Behind me stand hundreds of thousands of saints, a camp full of tortured victims staring silently at you and demanding justice. Not mercy – only justice. I stand before you here with them, with all my heart and soul.” If those lines sound familiar to you, you have a healthy grasp of history.  These words taken from the closing argument in Sholom Schwarzbard’s trial in 1927 are remarkably similar to Gideon Hausner’s opening speech in the Eichmann trial – a speech that rocked the nation and is eternally etched in Israel’s national awareness. Did Hausner’s preparation for the trial of[�]

Long before the Israeli Mossad became the best espionage organization in the world, Jewish spies in Israel stripped off and donned disguises, crossed enemy lines and brought back quality intelligence – intelligence that did not come under the heading of “the public’s right to know.” Among the most important, least well known and most forgotten of them was one whose life and activities nonetheless surpassed all imagination. The bohemian Jerusalem businessman, Israel’s leading insurance agent and a poet, was also among the leaders of one of Israel’s largest World-War-I era spy networks. Alter Levin was born in Minsk in 1883[�]

“The Land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people,” declared Israel’s first prime Minister David Ben-Gurion on the stage at Beit Dizengoff, 71 years ago today. To avoid desecrating the imminent Shabbat, he scheduled the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel for Friday afternoon, several hours before the cancellation of the British Mandate at midnight. Whether consciously or not, that shaped future relations of religion and state in the nascent nation. In keeping with Ben-Gurion’s vision of a melting pot, religion melded with the state after receiving its red membership booklet in the Histadrut labor[�]