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I owe a great debt to Sheldon Adelson, who left us on Tuesday. When it looked like despite help from the government and tycoons, it would not be possible to pay for flights for all the students who wanted to visit Israel with Taglit-Birthright, it was Adelson who stepped up, as he knew how to do, and cancelled the waiting lists. That happened in 2006, six years after we put the project in motion. Adelson, whose political views were far from my own, fulfilled my dream, and since he decided to become the project's main benefactor, there was no student who was forced to miss out on a trip to Israel because they didn't have the funds. For most of them, it is an experience that changes their worldview when it comes to the importance of Jewish continuity.
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As usual, going into the election party leaders are calling on each other to make concessions. This week, it was Benny Gantz who made the suggestion. I wouldn't want to see leaders without egos. I would like to see leaders who egos don't overshadow everything that is good, and don't run roughshod over the needs of the public. I would like to see leaders who aren't egotistical, but anyone who has no ego can't be someone who leads others. Only someone who believes in himself and his path, and whose personal interests are linked to those of society – as it sees him – is worthy of being a leader. Anyone who presumes to lead but it not convinced that his path is just and he is capable of executing it, will never lead anywhere.
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A wrap-up of aliyah statistics for 2020 published this week reported that 66% of new immigrants were not Jewish according to Jewish law and were accepted as immigrants under the Law of Return, which makes anyone with Jewish grandparents eligible for Israeli citizenship.
Writing in the religious newspaper Makor Rishon, Shlomo Petrokovsky called this "the disaster of the grandson clause," and expressed fear for the country's Jewish character should it continue. It's interesting that the people who are doubtful about people immigrating to Israel and adopting citizenship thanks to Jewish forebears are the same people who claim that the "demographic problem" isn't a problem at all, and that Israel will remain a Jewish state, even if a Jewish minority winds up ruling a Palestinian majority.
No. The "grandson clause" isn't a disaster – it's a blessing, unless the definition of Jewishness is strictly religious, rather than national. Hundreds of thousands of non-Jews who arrived in Israel form the former Soviet Union are an inseparable part of the Jewish nation and are unwilling to convert, because they are mostly non-religious. No Zionist would give them up, and no secularist should try to force any religion on them. We would do well to register anyone who comes to Israel under the Law of Return as a Jew. If the religious authorities do not view them as Jews, or they don't want to have religious weddings, they will have to decide to either convert or get married in Cyprus.
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It could very well be that when Prime Minister Netanyahu pressured his ministers to approve a strict lockdown, even though most of them didn't want to, he forgot that he was supposed to appear in court on Jan. 13. It's possible that he innocently believed that the lockdown was necessary, and came at the right time. But when the three judges in his trial announced that the court date had been postponed due to the lockdown until Feb. 8, it was hard not to connect the two things. This is exactly what Netanyahu meant when he called on former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to resign before he was indicted. A prime minister under such allegations cannot function, because he is engulfed in a conflict of interests even before he wakes up in the morning.
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