Neshama Carlebach on not hugging * Pres. Herzog: ‘Think Good’ * How do Haredi women behave?* Larry David is SO Jewish * Lara Logan’s grotesque Mengele comparison

[Times of Israel]( [The Blogs Weekly]( Thursday, December 9, 2021 From the blogs [I’m stepping back from hugs and embracing the mitzvah of consent]( By [Neshama Carlebach]( [Just as we’re exiting COVID lockdown into a touch-starved world, I’ve had the uncomfortable realization that my family’s tradition of hugging needs to be re-examined]( [Isaac Herzog]( [‘Think Good’: Time to transform the online discourse in Israel]( [On launching a campaign to encourage us all to stop before posting yet another insult and instead choose words that shine our inner light and help others shine theirs]( [Sam Lehman-Wilzig]( [Too many IDF soldiers: What will replace universal army service?]( [With signs that a smaller, higher tech army is already on the way, there is an alternative that would even include the ultra-Orthodox and Arab sectors]( [Andrew Silow-Carroll]( [Larry David has never been more Jewish than in this season’s ‘Curb’]( [David’s character is sacrilegious and heretical, but to dismiss him as ’self-hating’ is to miss out on the unmistakably Jewish conversation at the heart of the show]( [So how, in fact, do Haredi women behave?Â]( By [Gitit Levy-Paz]( [Ultra-Orthodox feminists aren’t just changing their own communities, they are posing a wider challenge: Can new and different models be tolerated in the Israeli secular space?]( [Sheldon Kirshner]( [Lara Logan’s grotesque comparison: Fauci and Mengele]( [How could anyone who calls herself a journalist compare an upstanding, caring scientist to the Nazi war criminal known as the Angel of Death?]( [Yes, there is a peacebuilding community in Israel and Palestine]( By [Ron Kronish]( [Dozens of organizations keep a flicker of hope burning, engaging out of the limelight in dialogue, advocacy and grassroots cooperative programs]( [Shuki Friedman]( [The IDF’s ‘Operation Guardian of the Pensions’ will backfire]( [The army’s campaign to prop up extravagant retirement payouts busts the budget and rankles the public. Becoming fodder for satire is not a good sign.]( [Barry H. Block]( [Social justice should not be controversial]( [There is a crisis today in our public schools: in many classrooms across the country, truth is being deemed treif, unfit for consumption. Politicians are proposing laws that attempt to restrict teachers from educating students about hard truths – such as the extent to which the United States was built by enslaved Black people, or that our country’s white founders did not really mean it when they said, “all men are created equal.” In some cases, this legislation seeks to ban teachers from discussing or even mentioning supposedly dangerous concepts...]( [A radical answer to Joseph, the evil tzadik: Building a just society]( By [Jeremy Benstein]( [How the sabbatical year solves the boom and bust business cycle, first sparked by a canny tycoon who had insider info and the keys to the kingdom (Vayigash)]( Top Ops [Dan Perry]( [A surreal encounter with Yasser Arafat]( [A 2001 sitdown left open key questions: Who was sending young crazies to blow themselves up in Israeli buses and cafes, and why turn down a Palestinian state?]( [Ariel Finkelstein]( [Can Israel’s politicians regain Israelis’ trust?]( [If they’d hand over political power to local authorities, that just might do the trick]( [Pinchas Goldschmidt]( [In Europe, we are freeing chained wives]( [A law extending the jurisdiction of Israel’s rabbinical courts over non-Israeli agunot has already helped free 80 women. And that’s just one tool in our arsenal]( [David Collier]( [What type of Jews do we want to be?]( [While the Jewish community reacts to hate when it’s banging at the door, it makes the fatal error of ignoring the root causes in the futile hope it will all blow over]( [Toni L. Kamins]( [There is no December dilemma]( [You’re either a Jew or you’re not, and if you are, you shouldn’t be celebrating Christmas or that other Christian holiday eight days later]( [Joshua Koonin]( [Why the Bennett vacation story matters]( [The conduct of the Bennett family suggests that politics rather than a truly perceived grave threat of the Omicron variant drove the PM to curtail air travel]( [Unsubscribe from this List]( Email not displaying correctly? [View in browser]( © 2021 The Times Of Israel, All Rights Reserved