More in ‘ethnicity’

A New York Times article about the Midwood neighborhood of Brooklyn—specifically, the way in which the feel of the neighborhood has been altered by a recent influx of wealthy Orthodox Jews—has prompted a rather profound debate about Jewish identity on a neighborhood blog. On Saturday, The Ditmas Park Blog mentioned the article—the post was written ...

Even without its subtitle, there could be no doubt about which group is being discussed in Religion or Ethnicity?: Jewish Identities in Evolution, the new collection of essays edited by Zvi Gitelman. No other people occupies precisely the same ambiguous position between religion and ethnicity as the Jews, or has to wrestle with the many ...

Moshe Katsav defends himself at a press conference in January.
In Israel, a country where victimhood is a badge of honor, just about every ethnic or religious group—Arab, Ethiopian, Russian, Mizrahi, ultra-Orthodox—is convinced that it’s been screwed over and that society “owes” it. These feelings aren’t necessarily false, of course, but sometimes it’s hard not to ...