Considerations

Politics, business, religion, and culture by Samuel J. Scott and Jeff Guevin

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Entries Tagged as 'Israel'

Speak Hebrew, Not Yiddish

March 6th, 2010 · 5 Comments · Anti-Semitism, Anti-Zionism, Britain, Business, Culture, Europe, Immigration, Israel, Judaism, Language, Personal, Politics, Religion, Russia, The Middle East

var fbShare = {url: ‘http://www.samueljscott.com/2010/03/06/speak-hebrew-not-yiddish/’,size:‘large’} JERUSALEM — When­ever I hear Amer­i­can or Euro­pean Jews speak­ing Ashke­nazi Hebrew on the bus or in syn­a­gogue, I go nuts. And I shake my head at the grow­ing pop­u­lar­ity and revival of Yid­dish among some West­ern Jews:
Although no one knows exactly how many Yid­dish speak­ers there are […]

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Life in Israel

March 6th, 2010 · No Comments · Culture, Israel, Judaism, Liberal Pundits, Personal, Politics, Religion, The Middle East, War, War on Terror

var fbShare = {url: ‘http://www.samueljscott.com/2010/03/06/life-in-israel/’,size:‘large’} Peo­ple always ask me what it’s like in Israel. Since I don’t usu­ally have hours to respond with a nuanced, lengthy dis­cus­sion, I nor­mally boil it down to one sen­tence: “This coun­try is the per­fect com­bi­na­tion of heaven and hell.”
Bradley Burston, a local colum­nist, puts it another way: “Liv­ing in […]

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Marriage — Brain or Heart?

March 3rd, 2010 · 6 Comments · Business, Civil Liberties, Culture, Dating, Economics, Education, Egypt, Feminism, India, Israel, Judaism, Personal, Politics, Religion, Sex, The Middle East

var fbShare = {url: ‘http://www.samueljscott.com/2010/03/03/marriage-brain-or-heart/’,size:‘large’} Ninth in an ongo­ing series of essays
BANGALORE, India — While I was trav­el­ing to the Sil­i­con Val­ley of the East in Decem­ber 2006 with my Suf­folk Uni­ver­sity M.B.A. class in Boston to study busi­ness there for a week, I popped into a local tourist trap to look at some […]

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Marketing Mossad

March 2nd, 2010 · No Comments · Advertising, Business, Culture, Israel, Law, Marketing, Politics, The Middle East, War on Terror

var fbShare = {url: ‘http://www.samueljscott.com/2010/03/02/marketing-mossad/’,size:‘large’} JERUSALEM — I just received an e-mail adver­tise­ment from the Jerusalem Post con­tain­ing this sub­ject line: “Sup­port the Mossad! Exclu­sive T-shirts Offers!” (The gram­mar mis­take was there as well.) Only $12.
Add this to my “Only in Israel” file. I can only pre­sume it’s a response to the con­tro­ver­sial assas­si­na­tion of […]

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New Economics Blog

March 1st, 2010 · No Comments · Business, Conservative Pundits, Economics, Europe, Finance, Globalization, Israel, Personal, Politics, The Middle East

var fbShare = {url: ‘http://www.samueljscott.com/2010/03/01/new-economics-blog/’,size:‘large’} I am now a co-blogger on Euro­pean and Mid­dle East eco­nom­ics at the web­site in sup­port of “The Return of the Great Depres­sion” by lib­er­tar­ian, Austrian-school econ­o­mist and polit­i­cal pun­dit Vox Day (blog, col­umn archive).
Of course, I have com­plete free­dom to write what I want, so I encour­age my […]

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Christian Israel

February 27th, 2010 · 3 Comments · Christianity, Culture, Israel, Journalism, Judaism, Law, Palestine, Politics, Religion, The Middle East

var fbShare = {url: ‘http://www.samueljscott.com/2010/02/27/christian-israel/’,size:‘large’} The Jerusalem Post has unveiled a revamped web­site with a Chris­t­ian sec­tion that con­tains this inter­est­ing arti­cle: “Will Israel Obey God or Man?”

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Redundant, Oppressed Men

February 26th, 2010 · No Comments · Advertising, Britain, Civil Liberties, Conservative Pundits, Culture, Dating, Economics, Education, Europe, Feminism, Health, Israel, Law, Marketing, Media, Politics, The Middle East

var fbShare = {url: ‘http://www.samueljscott.com/2010/02/26/redundant-oppressed-men/’,size:‘large’}
JERUSALEM — The first of a five-part British doc­u­men­tary on the state of men and man­li­ness in mod­ern, West­ern soci­ety:
Men and mas­culin­ity are being mar­gin­alised. Manly virtues are laughed at, even con­sid­ered dys­func­tional. Men are being edged out of the fam­ily, the work­place and wider soci­ety as […]

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The Israeli Arse

February 25th, 2010 · No Comments · Culture, Humor, Israel, Judaism, Religion, The Middle East

var fbShare = {url: ‘http://www.samueljscott.com/2010/02/25/the-israeli-arse/’,size:‘large’}
Since Israeli is a col­lec­tion of so many peo­ple from so many cul­tures and coun­tries, peo­ple here love to poke fun at each other (and them­selves). “Arsim” is a (plural), stereo­typ­i­cal, deroga­tory term for a cer­tain sub­cul­ture of Mizrahi Jews, those who came to Israel from the neigh­bor­ing Arab […]

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Globalization of Identity

February 24th, 2010 · 1 Comment · Britain, Culture, Economics, Education, Egypt, Europe, Globalization, Immigration, Israel, Japan, Language, Law, Personal, Politics

var fbShare = {url: ‘http://www.samueljscott.com/2010/02/24/globalized-identity/’,size:‘large’} JERUSALEM — When I was a pre-teen and teenager, I took ten­nis lessons at Oak Hill Coun­try Club (now closed) in Belleville, Illi­nois, and was later on my high school’s team for two years before my new­found pas­sions for jour­nal­ism and the Model U.N. took more of my time.
My favorite […]

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Israeli Stupidity

February 24th, 2010 · No Comments · Business, Culture, Economics, Finance, Israel, Law, Personal

var fbShare = {url: ‘http://www.samueljscott.com/2010/02/24/israeli-stupidity/’,size:‘large’} JERUSALEM — In prior posts, I dis­cussed the frus­tra­tions of deal­ing the bureau­cracy in Israeli cus­tomer-ser­vice. Now, Jonathan Degani, a for­mer MBA class­mate and col­league of mine, pro­vides some sim­i­lar — and, unfor­tu­nately, use­ful — infor­ma­tion:
If you worked more than one job in the past seven years then […]

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Divided Jerusalem

February 22nd, 2010 · 9 Comments · Boston, Christianity, Civil Liberties, Culture, Europe, Immigration, Islam, Israel, Judaism, Law, Massachusetts, Palestine, Personal, Politics, Religion, The Middle East

var fbShare = {url: ‘http://www.samueljscott.com/2010/02/22/divided-jerusalem/’,size:‘large’} JERUSALEM — An city gov­ern­ment offi­cial recently made an announce­ment that is real­is­ti­cally true in terms of Mid­dle East peace:
Yakir Segev, who holds the East Jerusalem port­fo­lio in the Jerusalem munic­i­pal­ity, made an unchar­ac­ter­is­tic remark on Fri­day, declar­ing that the Pales­tin­ian neigh­bor­hood east of the sep­a­ra­tion fence were “no […]

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Reversing Stagflation

February 21st, 2010 · 6 Comments · Business, Economics, Finance, Israel, The Middle East

var fbShare = {url: ‘http://www.samueljscott.com/2010/02/21/reversing-stagflation/’,size:‘large’} JERUSALEM — Israel is a crazy, mirac­u­lous coun­try — and even its econ­omy can prove the point. GDP rose at an annu­al­ized rate of 4.4 per­cent in the last quar­ter of 2009,  and consumer-prices decreased by 0.7 per­cent in Jan­u­ary.
I’ve never heard of such a phe­nom­e­non before. Is there […]

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Unemployed Men

February 19th, 2010 · 2 Comments · Business, Civil Liberties, Conservative Pundits, Culture, Economics, Entertainment, Feminism, Israel, Media, Palestine, Personal, Politics, The Middle East, War on Terror

var fbShare = {url: ‘http://www.samueljscott.com/2010/02/19/unemployed-men-2/’,size:‘large’} JERUSALEM — The Atlantic Monthly looks at the polit­i­cal and cul­tural con­se­quences of the reces­sion that per­vades the West­ern world, and here is an enlight­en­ing excerpt:
In her clas­sic soci­ol­ogy of the Depres­sion, The Unem­ployed Man and His Fam­ily, Mirra Komarovsky vividly describes how job­less­ness strained—and in […]

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Women of the Wall

February 16th, 2010 · 7 Comments · Civil Liberties, Culture, Feminism, Israel, Judaism, Law, Personal, Politics, Religion, The Middle East

var fbShare = {url: ‘http://www.samueljscott.com/2010/02/16/women-of-the-wall/’,size:‘large’} JERUSALEM — A group of ultra-Orthodox Jews ver­bally assaulted a group of women pray­ing at the West­ern Wall, called them “Nazis,” and blamed them for the Holo­caust.
It’s just another exam­ple of the insan­ity that per­vades extrem­ist groups in the Mid­dle East. The group, mem­bers of Women of the Wall […]

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TSA Insanity">TSA Insanity

February 15th, 2010 · 3 Comments · Civil Liberties, Culture, Islam, Israel, Law, Palestine, Personal, Politics, Religion, The Middle East, War on Terror

var fbShare = {url: ‘http://www.samueljscott.com/2010/02/15/tsa-insanity/’,size:‘large’} Sto­ries like this make me grate­ful for the secu­rity mea­sures taken by El Al, Israel’s main air­line:
Ryan was tak­ing his first flight, to Walt Dis­ney World, for his fourth birth­day.
The boy is devel­op­men­tally delayed, one of the effects of being born 16 weeks pre­ma­turely. His ankles are […]

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