Israel

Much as militant religion is full of contradictory claims, each invoked at the right moment, militant ethno-nationalism suffers the same fate. For every Israeli killed since 1948 (9,000), there are 10 Palestinians dead (90,000). For every Jewish child killed in October 7th (38), there are 300 Palestinian children killed in...

Hear me out. (No good idea ever started with that, did it?) What if the entire Zionist idea was just a first draft for an even more Final Solution? At the time, Zionism was revolutionary. And it has had its benefits, to a degree. (Although if World War II had broken...

For the most part, I identify as left-leaning. In many ways, I am more critical of Israel than the average Jew. But I have long been aware of the dangers that far left ideologies pose - the prioritization of minority rights above all else, the justification of violence when it's...

When my cousins were in the army, my aunt refused to leave the country. For years, she made sure to stick around just in case something happened to them. Aside from the level of devotion this demonstrated, which I can only be jealous of, it's illustrative of something that few...

Growing up, the narrative that Ultra Orthodox Jews (aka "Charedim") had as to why they weren't serving in the military was that they were actually performing their own crucial service - they were protecting the country spiritually. The harder they studied and prayed, the more protected the soldiers on the...

My brother joins the Israeli military tomorrow. My main emotion is sadness, which is saying a lot because I don't usually let myself feel much sadness. Yosef is joining a special-forces unit, which means he'll be doing harder, more brutal training, get exposed to more dangerous situations, and do...

Join Shlemple on a whimsical journey of soul crushing death and destruction. Sure to be a direct hit for the whole family.

Flip the tables for a moment, and imagine the Jews as Palestinians - how would you interpret their behaviors? One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter Imagine the Jews were living in a country. Not even Israel, which holds much Sentimental Value. Just an arbitrary land, in which they happen...

Without the Holocaust, Zionism would not have succeeded. It was a fringe movement, ignored by assimilated secular Jews as unnecessary, and by religious Jews as oppositional to its beliefs. The Holocaust was critical for the formation of the state of Israel - it shifted the views of Jews around...

I have been on a journey of deconstructing religion for the last 9 years, and this site is a testament to the variety of angles in which I've (literally) attacked the subject. In many ways, the challenges I grapple with around religion were ones that were issues for me...