Jacob Sivak
ARTICLES BY: Jacob Sivak
The Israeli Economy Continues to Be a Massive Success Story
A recent Reuters article by Steven Scheer about the financial health of Israel made me sit-up and take notice. The article claims that the Israeli...
Palestine and the Holocaust: What If?
I was scanning the news (a common Jewish activity), when a recent article by Marwan Bishara in Al Jazeera (Aug 18, 2022) caught my eye....
Earthquakes Had a Large Impact on Historic Israel; Is a New One Coming?
The tragic earthquake that struck southern Turkey and northwest Syria this February is a reminder that the Middle East, located at the junction of three...
Israel Sells Missile System to Germany; The Jews Will Not Be Helpless Again
Eighty years ago, the remaining Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto rose up in revolt against the genocidal Nazi forces that were in the process of...
Why Are Israelis So Happy, and Why Isn’t It Newsworthy?
In 2017, when I first became aware of the World Happiness Report, I read that Israel was ranked the 11th happiest country in the world...
Making Aliyah Is Not a New Idea: The Aliyah of the Tosafists in 1211 CE
Jewish history is long, tortuous, and difficult to appreciate. A primary barrier has been the meager documentary record. With a few exceptions, such as one...
Where Is the Palestinian Equivalent of Haaretz?
In "Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor," Yossi Klein Halevi, an American-Israeli, tries to break the impasse between Israelis and Palestinians by setting out his narrative...
Jewish Diversity, Israeli Politics, and the Rules of the Game
The late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wrote about Jews, that “No small people is more diverse, ethnically, culturally, attitudinally and religiously.” Nowhere is this more evident...
Remembering The Scorpion Pass Massacre of 1954
March 17 this year will mark 69 years since one of the worst terrorist attacks on Israelis since the establishment of the State in 1948....
Do Child Victims of the Holocaust Explain Israel’s Baby Boom?
I recently read 50 Children, by Steven Pressman, a 2014 book that describes how Gilbert and Eleanor Kraus, a Jewish couple from Philadelphia, brought 50...
Jewish Soldiers Helped Liberate Palestine From the Ottoman Empire
A recent article from National Library of Israel suggests that T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), a strong supporter of Arab nationalism, also lobbied in favor...
There Is No Moral Justification for Israel’s Self-Destruction
The recent surge of Palestinian attacks on Israelis -- using knives, guns, and, most recently, remotely detonated bombs on buses in Jerusalem -- is an...
Cucumbers: The Early Roots of Israel’s ‘Start-up Nation’
Are cucumbers an Israeli invention? No, of course not. Many varieties of cucumbers have been cultivated around the world for more than 3,000 years. They...
An Inconvenient Truth: The Jewish People Never Left the Land of Israel
I just finished reading former US Ambassador David Friedman’s recent article, in which he makes the point that Judaism and Zionism are inseparable. It is...
