Weekly Highlights: Reading Amos Oz in Vancouver * 71 things I love about Israel * The not-so-promised Jewish State * Our Alex’s IDF service was his salvation

[The Blogs]( [The Marketplace of Ideas]( Weekly Highlights Thursday, May 9, 2019 From the blogs [Reading Amos Oz in Vancouver]( By [Mike Polischuk]( [After growing up in the Russian-speaking immigrant bubble, how did I mend my broken bond with Israeli culture? I left]( [Talya Woolf]( [71 things to love about Israel]( [What made my Israeli heart a little bigger this year? Our humor, brashness, kindness, the intrinsic sense of family, and that dust that gets everywhere]( [Yael Shahar]( [The sudden, shocking, fitting leap from mourning to jubilation]( [It’s jarring, but don’t forget we went from the darkest period of a long, terrible exile into the sunshine of rebirth in a single generation]( [Yoav Ende]( [The not-so-promised Jewish State]( [Israel is not divinely guaranteed, leaving us to continually ask the question: What must we do to be worthy of this privilege?]( Blog [Our Alex’s IDF service was his salvation, not his downfall]( By [Steve Sasaki]( [The pain of losing our son while he was serving in the IDF was made worse by baseless talk of his death as a suicide]( [Shayna Abramson]( [Peace from the ground up]( [Enough politics — when people from both sides truly want peace, they will demand leaders who pursue peace, and replace those who do not]( [Naftali Moses]( [Too short]( [Kaddish. Some sad songs sung by talented high schoolers who have practiced well. A speech or two. Hatikva. And we are done.]( [Shayna Goldberg]( [Ema, should I stand still or should I run?]( [Whether memorializing national tragedies or fleeing Gaza rockets, our children are learning core lessons about the meaning of life in Israel]( Analysis [Philip Goldwasser]( [How do you solve a problem like USCJ?]( [You start by dissolving it and setting its flagship youth org, USY, free to fend for — and rebrand — itself]( [Pinchas Goldschmidt]( [US synagogues need what Europeans have – armed guards]( [Liberal gun laws in the United States are part of the problem, but they can also be part of the solution]( [Ian G. Haworth]( [Vaccines, the ultra-Orthodox, and the red line of religious freedom]( [This is a clear case of ’my right to swing my fist ends where another’s nose begins’]( [Catherine Chatterley]( [Faked hate crimes, anti-Semitism and Linda Sarsour]( [Some words of optimism for those horrified by a hoax and freaked out by the visit of a controversial political activist]( [Benji Levy]( [From oy to joy: A call for positivity in Jewish engagement]( [’Your exclusive focus on Jewish victimhood really inspires me,’ said no Jewish millennial ever]( Analysis [Asher Weill]( [The return of Avraham Sutzkever]( [The ’greatest Yiddish poet who ever lived’ was a Holocaust hero who, when he came to Israel, was largely ignored]( more Choice voices [Helen Maryles Shankman]( [Thanks for the iMemories]( [The videos of our milestones make me want to tell my younger self to stop fretting, stop cleaning, cuddle the kids, and enjoy the moment]( [Ittay Flescher]( [The Holocaust as told on Instagram: Authentic, powerful]( [Eva.Stories honors the intense desire to live that burns so strongly in humans when faced with adversity]( [Ross Singer]( [Rabbi Bigman: The left thinks our problems began in 1967. They’re wrong]( [’I think Palestinian aspirations for a state are a good thing — I think the violent means they have used are abhorrent’]( [Avi Jorisch]( [The ultimate shadow strike to safeguard Israel]( [Yaakov Katz writes a page-turning account of the never-before-told story of how Israel took out Syria’s nuclear reactor]( [Fred Maroun]( [Why the anti-Israel narrative is winning, and why that matters]( [Regardless of whose fault it is, Palestinian suffering garners sympathy and it’s in Israeli interests to keep trying for a resolution]( [Josh Hasten]( [‘Not today!’ — Modern Zionism and Game of Thrones]( [This mantra of ’Today, we will stay alive’ has enabled the Jewish people to survive]( [Unsubscribe from this List]( © 2019 THE TIMES OF ISRAEL, All Rights Reserved