Tikvah
Editors’ Pick

December 1, 2017

Why a Leading American Rabbi Picked a Fight with Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister

Tzipi Hotovely is everything Reform leaders are not.

Tzipi Hotovely, Israel’s deputy foreign minister and a leading figure in the Likud, has recently been the subject of two controversies in the U.S. First, a Hillel house canceled, for political reasons, a talk she was scheduled to give. (The Hillel’s director later apologized.) Second, she gave an interview in which she commented that American Jewish teenagers, unlike their Israeli counterparts, rarely serve in the military and are not subject to rocket attacks. Rabbi Rick Jacobs, head of the Union of Reform Judaism, responded with pique, calling on Benjamin Netanyahu to dismiss her from his cabinet. Leah Aharoni comments:

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