Jewish People Policy Institute

Is the American Jewish community about to go over “the leadership cliff?"

On the Israel-diaspora front, surprising good news and, unfortunately, not-so-surprising bad news.

First, the bad news. The arrest and harassment of a woman reciting the Shema prayer aloud during Rosh Chodesh services this past week at the Western Wall is nothing less than shameful — an act that Jews of all denominations and beliefs should view as an embarrassment and outrage.

Israelis who leave their native country to settle in the diaspora have long been known as yordim, those who go down. It is a disparaging term, and one in contrast to those diaspora Jews who make aliyah, or ascend, to live in Israel.

The two concepts – going up to or down from Israel -- are anchored in a moral equation that harks back to classical Zionism, which negated the diaspora and insisted that Jewish survival depends on the imperative of aliyah.

NEW YORK (JTA) – The website of the Jewish People Policy Institute was hacked Thursday by a group that the institute claims is affiliated with Hamas.

The JPPI, a Jerusalem-based think tank that focuses on the Jewish future and Israel's security, issued a statement saying hackers took over its website, then posted a picture of an Israeli tank and a Palestinian child on the English section, and removed a recently uploaded assessment and analysis documents.