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Richard DiamondThe Times of Israel (Blogs) |
Here is a paradox that Jewish tradition has lived with for centuries without fully confronting it. The Torah mandated animal sacrifice as the center...
The Grief of Estrangement There is a particular kind of grief that has no clean name — the grief of loving something so completely that you never...
To navigate Trump, Israel must first understand how he actually operates — and what that means for every agreement, commitment, and room he walks...
The world’s antisemites see one Jewish people. We need to as well. Consider two scenes from Jewish life in 2026. In Jerusalem, a young woman who...
The memorandum of understanding on peaceful coexistence between the United States and Iran is not a diplomatic achievement. It is a diplomatic...
The op-ed I might have written last week — predicting that Donald Trump would eventually blame Benjamin Netanyahu for the shortcomings of his...
I write to you as a friend — one who has stood beside you through the most consequential decisions of our era, and who values that friendship above...
I am 85 years old. I have been a Zionist my entire life. And I find myself increasingly unable to defend an Israel that has abandoned the vision that...
Trump entered the Iran war as a showman entering an arena. Now that the crowd has stopped roaring, he is declaring victory and heading for the exit...
The Threshold, Not the Fall For most of the history of this reading, a single word has quietly poisoned the well: sin. The Hebrew chet means, at...
Explaining to Israelis Why the Overwhelming Majority of American Jews Identify as Democrats and Traditional Progressives A recurring source of...
What Intra-Jewish Fragmentation Has in Common with the Wars That Nearly Destroyed Western Civilization — and the One Solution That Worked Israel...
There is a comforting story we tell ourselves. It holds that suffering ennobles, that the persecuted become the most reliable guardians against...
Ronit Kertsner’s documentary Torn, screening this week, through May 28, in the Times of Israel’s DocuNation The Oral Law was meant to stay oral...
The Big Bang names not a first moment within time but the ontological inception of this cosmological regime — the constitutive actualization of...
Remembering the Lessons of Babylon After October 7, after the campus chants, after the harassment and the synagogue security details, many Israelis...
There is a fact about religious history that most believers prefer not to look at directly: the faiths that proclaim love most loudly have, more often...
The Frame That Houses Arguments: Israel’s Most Dangerous Enemy May Be Internal Jewish civilization has a trick, and Israel inherited it. The trick...
The only path to a real solution is the one already underway: the destruction of the regime that makes the problem possible. Let’s be honest about...
Calling for a negotiated settlement to end the Middle East conflict at this moment in history carries roughly the same practical weight as a...
There is a sentence you will never hear spoken aloud in any foreign ministry, any chancellery, or any presidential press briefing. It is nonetheless...
The fracture in Israeli society is not a failure of leadership or civility. It’s a war between four incompatible visions of what this country is...
(This post is a summary of https://rdiamond.substack.com/p/from-infinite-potential-to-purposeful) The Kabbalistic tradition names the originating...
The case for a decisive 30-day campaign to end the Iran crisis once and for all Wars have moments. Fleeting alignments of military reality, political...
The Iran End Game: Forced Surrender, Regional Reconstruction, and the Path Beyond Theocracy The Failure of the Ceasefire Paradigm History has a...
The Death Wish as Strategy: Martyrdom Culture and the Failure of Deterrence The architecture of modern deterrence theory rests on a deceptively simple...
To Tucker Carlson and Every Bible-Quoting Antisemite: Stop Using God’s Name to Curse the Jews There is something especially vile about using the...
Orthodoxy in a World Built to Change There is a deep tension at the heart of religious orthodoxy, and it becomes most visible when we take creation...
There is a striking difference between the first tablets and the second, and it is not accidental. The first tablets are described as entirely the...
Sometimes redemption emerges from messy circumstances, flawed personalities, and unlikely alliances. Each year on Purim we retell a story filled with...
On Purim, Judaism does something daring. It turns the synagogue into a theater. We boo villains. We cheer heroes. We dress in costume. We feast. We...
A Wandering Jew’s Case for a Wider Israel I have been a wandering Jew within Judaism. Not in the romantic sense—backpack, prayerbook, and vague...
Two Democracies, One Playbook Last Thursday, the Supreme Court of the United States did something unremarkable by the standards of any healthy...
Real change does not come from the negotiating table. It comes from terms of surrender. Israel is running out of time to remember this. Israel is...
Why a Proposed Billboard That Says “God Curses Those Who Curse the Jews” Is Raising Eyebrows — and Why It Deserves Serious Consideration...
Asymmetrical systems warfare, not slogan warfare By now, Diaspora Jews should be clear-eyed about one fact: overt antisemitism does not survive...
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