…although sooner is obviously better than later, I am willing to wait. And unless you are a member of one of those first three priority groups specifically designated by the CDC, you should be just as willing.

Rationing health care is inherently a tragic and awful thing to do. It invites ethical trade-offs of enormous complexity, and there’s a long history of the US government doing it wrong, such as prioritizing kidney transplants only to churchgoing middle-class men. Open public critique and engagement is an important part of the process by which a healthy democracy figures out how to solve hard moral dilemmas.

Do we really want state or federal health authorities or politicians deciding whose work is most important and how to weigh that against who is more at risk? That’s a very perilous moral game to play. Instead, we should have a simple rule: You get vaccinated in age order.

…the public is still displeased with a government that hardly functions. Many Israelis, including rightwing voters who support Netanyahu’s ideology, blame him for this miserable state of affairs. Does all this mean Netanyahu is in trouble? Yes. Does it mean he is probably gone? Not even close.

Israel needs leadership that does what is right, not because it is good for the survival of the politicians, but because it is right for the people. Sadly, that is not the type of government Netanyahu and Gantz established back in May… An election will cost the country a lot of money, and it will be ugly. But it is also an opportunity for change and that is something Israel desperately needs.

Even Israel’s most experienced poll-takers did not predict the intensity of the “Gideon Saar Phenomenon.” [.] Anyone who has been hanging out in Tel Aviv in recent days and has been privy to random street conversations knows that secular left-wingers (including Balfour protesters) have been viewing Saar more positively. They are ready to vote for him because they believe that he will succeed in doing what other center-left leaders failed to do: To bring down Netanyahu.

In leading Western countries, the notion that courts can weigh in on the constitutionality of the constitution has been rejected, even as regards constitutional amendments… The judicial revolution of 1995 was clothed in the language of popular sovereignty and limited judicial power. Today, the court is revealing that to have been just a façade, and a stepping stone to naked judicial supremacy.

According to which criteria would it be reasonable or just for the dominant ethnic group to determine a collective constitutional identity that strengthens its supremacy, while denying that very same right to self-determination to a national minority in its own homeland?

An expanded panel of 11 justices of the High Court of Justice on Tuesday hinted at a hearing that they prefer to interpret the Jewish Nation-State Law in a manner that will resolve controversies instead of nixing it…it seemed that the justices’ preferred solution would be to declare that all parts of the law, including those which might be misused in a discriminatory manner, cannot contradict Israel’s democratic principle of equality.

The panelists concluded that discussions about anti-Semitism and defining anti-Semitism should not be confined to Jewish voices only. By contrast, the message from the competing panel and other prominent Jewish voices on social media was that only Jewish voices should be heard on panels about anti-Semitism.

On this point, JVP is correct, as painful as that is to admit.

Of course non-Jews must be part of the conversation about anti-Semitism and the IHRA’s politicized definition. I am a white Jew from a middle-class background, born and raised in Arizona. I study and speak about anti-Black, anti-Arab, anti-Latinx racisms; I fight against Islamophobia, ableism and systemic poverty.

The panel [featured] Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Temple University professor Marc Lamont Hill, who have themselves engaged in anti-Semitic rhetoric, alongside outspoken Israel critic Peter Beinart… The inclusion of these participants in a panel on anti-Semitism is both comically counterproductive and a tacit approval of an intellectual environment in which anti-Semitism is allowed to blossom.

Newsom’s decision won’t please everyone. The governor has been under pressure from virtually every constituency and interest group in the Democratic Party to pick a senator who represents them. For instance, many civil-rights leaders and women’s groups were pressuring Newsom to choose a Black woman…

Gov. Gavin Newsom made a wise, if not terribly surprising, choice Tuesday in appointing Secretary of State Alex Padilla… If there is one thing that Padilla is not, it is flashy. He doesn’t do rash or brash. He’s not a firebrand or a media hound, but a cool, considered and thoughtful leader. Senatorial, you might say. Even as a twentysomething on the Los Angeles City Council, Padilla projected a maturity and steadiness beyond his years.

[Alex Padilla] has a track record as a skilled legislator and a steadfast advocate for justice, and I believe he will be a powerful voice in the Senate for those who continue to be denied our country’s promise of equality.

The calendar for 2020 is made up of uniform blocks, but that’s not what my mental map of the year looks like. In my head, the year looks like the calendar version of a homunculus — a distorted version of the human body, where each part is sized based on how much of the brain is devoted to controlling it. The hands on a homunculus are enormous, and the elbow is disproportionately miniature. In my mental map of the year, the summer is compressed and small; the week of the election balloons off the page; and March swells to crowd out February, April, and May.

…time itself has felt different this year, our relationship with it altered significantly by the pandemic. Whatever comfort we once derived from considering the past is gone. Now it’s a stark reminder of all that we had, all that we took for granted, and what we must still reckon with — that our future is not likely to look like what we’re used to.

We had these months in the middle of the year where a whole lot of stuff disappeared from our packed lives. Everything was cancelled, even work. We barely left the house and we certainly weren’t trying to catch the 7.55am to make the connection with the 8.20 to get to work by 9. So many of the tasks which normally fill our days disappeared, including the gym. And the less we had to do, the more time we had.