Talmudic rabbis disagree on whether the action or the intention of veneration or protest is more important. Plus: Is magic holy?

How to teach children about the Jewish State without cheerleading for Israel

Photographers Janet Russek and David Scheinbaum document what remains of the old Jewish neighborhood

As Iraqi Kurds put independence to a referendum on Monday, the Arab world works to quash the statehood aspirations of the Western-friendly nation

‘Afghanistan is the swamp and Trump now owns it’

Successive two-term administrations made a mess of the Middle East. Who will clean up?

Bookworm: Alain de Botton teaches ‘The Course of Love,’ but why?

A casualty of a naïve belief in Israel’s potential to adopt a secular Hebrew culture beyond Judaism’s defining religious difference, the Russian-born writer was also revived as a feminist icon in the 1970s

To better understand the settler movement today, look to new thinkers like Rav Shagar, not the foundational minds of Ravs Kook, Amital, and Lichtenstein