“Moses took the bones of Joseph with him,” says the Bible (Exodus 13:19), quoting his demand in his last days (Genesis 50:25), and ultimately reporting that “the bones of Joseph, which the Israelites had brought up from Egypt (Joshua 24:32),” were indeed buried in their homeland as Moses had planned and Joseph willed. Historicity aside, what the Israelites carried on their shoulders for 40 years from the Red Sea’s menacing waters through the Sinai Desert’s punishing heat was more than one man’s remains; it was the value of honoring the dead.

In the offices [of] EITAN, there are 95 files still open from the 1948 war. A team of about 50 active researchers is tasked with closing them—a hybrid outfit of detective-historians, not regular soldiers but rather reservists called up for a few weeks a year… Each file is periodically opened and reviewed for clues—something that might be apparent to a fresh pair of eyes, a hint that that might have evaded researchers in the past.

…we can assume Israel and Russia exploited the fact that Syria was mired in a civil war. Syrian President Bashar Assad, focused almost entirely on his own survival in recent years, couldn’t have prevented Russia from doing as it pleased on Syrian soil – even if he had wanted to – because Moscow had rescued his regime. We can also assume that an operation of this sort is managed at the highest levels on both sides, spearheaded by the respective army chiefs of staff (first Gadi Eizenkot and then Aviv Kochavi in Israel and Valery Gerasimov in Russia).

…it is time to embrace the truth that Israel is the rightful owner of the land where Jews have lived from time immemorial, and to which the Jewish people have historical, biblical and legal rights. While two million Palestinians do live beside Jews in these lands, they too would be better off being granted civil rights than living under the dictatorial rule of the Palestinian Authority, which systematically abuses and oppresses its own people, offering them nothing but despair and more violence.

Annexation of the Palestinian territories and imposing Israeli law on 2.5 million people without rights will convince us. Only then will we be able to look in the mirror and admit sadly – though with a certain amount of relief – that we are finished with democracy. Because only annexation will force us to realize that even now we are a country without any borders, and that 20 percent of its residents lack rights.

Already members of Israel’s ruling coalition are calling for annexation of the West Bank. The danger is that it would mark the end of security cooperation with the Palestinian Authority and preclude any hope of a two-state solution. It would bring to the fore Israel’s impossible choice between being a democratic state, with equal rights for all, including 2.5 million Arabs living in the area, who would soon become a majority, or being a Jewish state that in denying the right to vote to its Arab population would be decried as apartheid in the international community. It is all too realistic to assume that such a dramatic move could lead to another Mideast war.

Sunday night’s National Council of Young Israel dinner was a feast for Trump lovers, with a tasty helping of old fashioned patriotism and a side dish of religion… The bright spot, Rabbi Moskowitz added, is that “for the first time in our history, the Jewish people have a real friend in the White House — President Trump is the most benevolent leader the Jewish people have ever known in their 2,000 years in their Diaspora, believe me.”

Speaking Sunday, Moskowitz said “We’ve allowed Torah-true values to come under question or worse. We’ve allowed them to be replaced with the leftist progressive tikkun olam ideology. … Leftist progressivism, as great as you might think it is, is not Judaism.” Upon mention of the “tikkun olam” agenda, the crowd booed. “Tikkun olam,” Hebrew for “repairing the world,” is a phrase often used by left-wing Jewish groups in particular to talk about social justice, which conservatives often dismiss as liberal activism.

Tikkun olam, in all these cases, is the driving force: a concern for the disadvantaged, from the slave to the captive to the pauper to the woman trapped in an abusive marriage. For those who claim to be “religious Jews” to be so dismissive, cruel and ignorant of their own tradition is a greater defamation of the Nation of Israel than any trope I could ever imagine.

From what I’ve seen, Buttigieg doesn’t seem terribly sold on the idea of gayness as a cultural framework, formative identity, or anything more than a category of sexual and romantic behavior. When he came out in a 2015 essay four years into his tenure as mayor, it was with some reluctance. “I’m not used to viewing this as anyone else’s business,” he wrote. “Being gay has had no bearing on my job performance in business, in the military, or in my current role as mayor.” According to the essay, Buttigieg only decided to reveal his sexual orientation to the world because he wanted to start dating

I’m worried because it in some ways echoes an earlier question about whether Kamala Harris — whose father came from Jamaica, whose mother came from India and whose husband is white — is black enough… He sounds sufficiently gay to me. His powers of empathy seem plenty informed by his sexual orientation. And we need to stop making assumptions about how well someone can understand and address what minorities go through based on his or her looks or vocal inflections or anything of the sort. That’s the quintessence of prejudice. And it’s the antithesis of enlightenment.

Beyond the question of whether Buttigieg presents as gay enough—whatever that means—is the ugly notion that gays haven’t faced the same level of historic discrimination as others. We were targeted in the Holocaust, subjected to ice-pick lobotomy “cures” in the 1950s, fall victim to horrific hate crimes, and only recently won the right to marry or adopt. We’ve suffered enough to earn our seat at the table.

Many Millennials—and especially the urban, college-educated consumers prized by marketers—might just be tired of drinking so much.

There isn’t any great statistical evidence yet that young adults have altered their drinking habits on a grand scale. Changes in habit often lag behind changes in attitude, and national survey data on drinking habits reflect only small declines in heavy alcohol use.

The confusing thing is why this has to be about millennials at all. Such framing buys into the false premise that we millennials are a lumbering group of like-minded people operating in concert with each other. That’s not true—as David Costanza, an associate professor of organizational sciences at George Washington University, wrote in Slate last year, it’s really tempting to lump people together by the years they were born. But there’s almost always more variation within a group as big as ‘millennials’ than there is uniformity.

Legions of so-called “sober curious” individuals are putting the shot glasses down, and seeking an alternative to a punch-drunk life of bloating, inhibited execution function, and, some might say, fun. This mocktail movement is fueled, Nicole Fallert wrote in a recent article for Vox, by “a new audience of information-laden young people who are willing to buy seltzers, nonalcoholic beers, and even water in the name of wellness.” These might be the same friends who talk about eliminating meat or other animal products in favor of a “plant-based diet,” or swapping their standing coffee order for decaf drinks.

We know the Left enjoys pushing this narrative. They like to create further division between whites and minorities. But they seriously chose the stupidest time to run with this talking point. They chose the weekend Jussie Smollett was not charged for staging his own hate crime to talk about white privilege.

Doesn’t this kind of miss the whole damn point of recognizing white privilege? Awareness (for me) means that you don’t continue to contribute to whiteness, willingly. Also, a hashtag really doesn’t do anything to create the actual discussions that are crucial for interrupting racism.

…while some are using this as a gesture to call out their white privilege, and recognizing systematic racism, it looks like many are also ridiculing the hashtag, and also using it to deny the existence of white privilege, calling it a “myth,” and accusing those who are sharing stories of “race-baiting.” Some are giving supposed “proof” that it doesn’t exist because they weren’t able to get away with certain transgressions.