Dorothea Shefer-Vanson

By Dorothea Shefer-Vanson MEVASSERET ZION, Israel — This year’s Passover festival began under the cloud that has enveloped Israel ever since the mass demonstrations protesting the so-called “legal reform” began. Yet preparations for the festival went ahead in the customary fashion, with spring cleaning and food purchases and preparations much as usual. By a quirk […]

By Dorothea Shefer-Vanson MEVASSERET ZION, Israel — The echoes of events that happened in Germany just a few decades ago are continuing to disturb my peace of mind and give me sleepless nights. We all know that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s position is precarious and that his main goal is to avoid having to stand

By Dorothea Shefer-Vanson MEVASSERET ZION, Israel — Since my childhood in London, I have enjoyed being able to read a newspaper that is delivered to my house every morning. In England this was pushed through our letterbox and appeared on our carpeted hallway floor. In Israel it is thrown onto our driveway from the car

By Dorothea Shefer-Vanson   MEVASSERET ZION, Israel — Now that the review, revision, even reversion, of basic principles in the judiciary has come to the fore of Israel’s political life it would seem to be appropriate to extend the approach to other spheres which till now have held sway and been considered sacrosanct. The time

By Dorothea Shefer-Vanson   MEVASSERET ZION, Israel — In 1945, when philosopher Karl Popper published “The Open Society and its Enemies,” his landmark critique of historicist philosophy, he probably did not suspect that only three years later a Jewish state would be established in a distant part of the Middle East. On the other hand,