I'm a transplanted New Yorker who moved to Jerusalem more than 25 years ago.
For the past three years I have been the full-time staff content editor at EyeCarePro, a 100+ employee company that creates content for 2,000 North American optometry practices. I started my career as an editor at Cosmopolitan and Seventeen magazines, so I've come full-circle.
I am also a longtime reporter for Religion News Service and the National Catholic Register, and was a staff reporter for the NY Jewish Week and a freelancers for USA Today for more than two decades. I cover anything and everything related to Israelis and Palestinians, women's issues, religion, culture, tourism and much more.
My news stories, features, essays and op-eds have appeared in the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, New York Newsday, the Newark Start Ledger, Redbook, Cosmopolitan, Family Circle, Readers Digest: New Choices, Photo District News, Moment, Hadassah, Inside, Lilith, Na'amat, B'nai Brith, Teen People, The Jerusalem Post, and many other publications and websites.
Follow me on Twitter: @michelechabin1, find me on Facebook. or e-mail me: [email protected].
(RNS) - American Jews say they were blindsided by the U.S. Senate's lightning-fast passage of a bill to make daylight saving time year-round and intend to fight it. The Sunshine Protection Act, which passed the Senate on March 15, will make it nearly impossible for Jews to pray communally in the morning, Jewish advocates say, and still get to work or school on time during the winter months.
Long touted, and sometimes marketed, as a show that appeals mainly to women, the Starz hit " Outlander " actually has a strong - if bashful - male fan base. Bashful because TV reviewers tend to focus more on the show's romantic time travel elements and steamy sex scenes than its strong depictions of real-life historical events, bloody battle scenes and male camaraderie.
JERUSALEM - The results of Israel's Nov. 1 elections - the return of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party, which is expected to form a government with the support of other, even more right-wing parties - have many people worried, and Holy Land Christians are no exception.
In October 2020, when the Torah reader at Shirat HaTamar, a Modern Orthodox congregation in Efrat, realized-mid-sentence-that an ever-so-slightly scrunched letter might render the Torah unkosher, the shul's leaders called on their resident expert in Jewish law: Shira Marili Mirvis.
By Michele Chabin December 21, 2021 JERUSALEM - Ten years ago, Aliza and Netanel Fenichel and their young children were in a car accident. Aliza, who was 25 weeks pregnant and badly injured, underwent an emergency cesarean section to save her life, and her unborn son's.
JERUSALEM (RNS) - 'Recovery is all about change and healing,' said one person in recovery who took a tour of Israel that allows Jews in recovery to explore their Jewish heritage and faith. 'I feel like a changed man because of this trip.'
JERUSALEM (RNS) - In 2019, Baruch Lanner, a former rabbi convicted of sexually abusing students at a New Jersey high school in the 1970s and 1980s, began delving into the possibility of applying for Israeli citizenship. Before long, Shana Aaronson heard about it. "I was contacted by people in the community in the U.S.
JERUSALEM (RNS) - Susan Weiss, an Israeli activist, worries that proposed judicial reform that would grant Israeli lawmakers the right to overrule the country's Supreme Court would greatly broaden the reach of Israel's Orthodox Jewish establishment. "We think the state should not be in charge of religion.
JERUSALEM (RNS) - When American and Israeli officials inaugurated the first-ever U.S. embassy in Jerusalem Monday (May 14) in a festive red, white and blue ceremony, more than 100 evangelical Christians, including former U.S. congresswoman Michele Bachmann, were on hand. So were scores of American Jews, including Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, many of them Orthodox.
JERUSALEM (RNS) - This year, the first night of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, coincides with the 70th anniversary of Israel's founding - what Palestinians call the Nakba, or 'catastrophe' - and the relocation of the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
OSWIECIM, Poland (RNS) - Seventy-three years ago this week Irving Roth, 88, was liberated from the Buchenwald concentration camp. He and his brother had been imprisoned in the Auschwitz death camp, but as Allied troops approached, the boys were sent on a death march to Buchenwald - where his brother died.
CLOSE JERUSALEM (RNS) - For the International March of the Living this week, more than 12,000 from nearly 50 countries will travel to Auschwitz to commemorate the 6 million Jews murdered during the Holocaust.
Jerusalem - He was an acquaintance, someone Sarah* had known for years, so she didn't worry when she found herself alone with him one wintery day. She discovered she was pregnant soon after he raped her. In her thirties, childless and aching to be a mother, she decided to raise this unexpected baby on her own.
BETHLEHEM, West Bank (RNS) - Artisans in and around Bethlehem specialize in carving wood from a tree that makes several appearances in the Bible. They consider the work - a millennium-old tradition - holy. But clashes between Israelis and Palestinians threaten this year's Christmastime sales.
Tel Aviv - Sophie Menashe, who is in her 70s, rarely leaves her fifth-floor walk-up apartment these days, but she insists it's not because the six-story building lacks an elevator. The reason, she said, is fear. "I've lived here 40 years. I raised my three children here and I love to walk to the sea.
JERUSALEM - Franciscan Sister Bridget Tighe, the new director of Caritas in Jerusalem, is deeply concerned about the Trump administration's decision to withhold more than $100 million in funding to the U.N. Relief Works Agency (UNRWA), which has been supporting Palestinian refugees for 70 years.
JERUSALEM (RNS) - Yael Horovitz, who immigrated to Israel from Australia, always loved the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, but the emphasis there on Christmas made her feel a little left out. "In Australia, for two months out of the year I couldn't escape Christmas carols," said Horovitz, who is Jewish.
Visa restrictions probably won't have a strong effect on the "dozens" of Israeli water-related companies operating in the U.S. "because most have U.S.-based subsidiaries or agents and distributors or are engaged joint ventures," Yaacoby noted.
CLOSE JERUSALEM - A truck slammed into a group of Israeli soldiers at a Jerusalem bus stop Sunday, killing four soldiers and wounding 17 other people before the Palestinian driver was fatally shot, police said about the latest round of deadly violence in more than a year.
JERUSALEM - Pvt. Tali Goft, an Israeli soldier serving on a base in northern Israel, didn't know Erez Orbach, one of the four soldiers killed in a truck-ramming attack here Jan. 8, but she felt a kinship with him. They both volunteered to serve in the military despite medical conditions that ordinarily would exempt them from Israel's mandatory service.
CLOSE AMONA, West Bank - Israeli police stormed a synagogue Thursday where about 200 Israeli protesters, some of them as young as 12-years-old, had barricaded themselves in Amona, an unauthorized Jewish settlement in the West Bank. The court-ordered evacuation began Wednesday with mostly peaceful resistance from settlers.
PARIS - Yael Haccoun and her family are Orthodox Jews from the working-class Paris suburb of Sarcelles, but they flew to Israel in late September to start a new life and escape the anti-Semitism around them.
CLOSE JERUSALEM (RNS) - Yael Horovitz, who immigrated to Israel from Australia, always loved the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, but the emphasis there on Christmas made her feel a little left out. "In Australia, for two months out of the year I couldn't escape Christmas carols," said Horovitz, who is Jewish.
JERUSALEM (RNS) - Thousands of Orthodox Christians will crowd the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on Saturday to watch the Greek Orthodox patriarch emerge from the structure surrounding Jesus' tomb with two lit candles. The ceremony, known as Holy Fire, is described by Orthodox Christians as a "miracle" that occurs each year on Holy Saturday, the day preceding Easter.
CLOSE Corrections and clarifications: An earlier version of this story misidentified the college associated with the excavation team. JERUSALEM (RNS) - Archaeologists excavating in northern Israel believe they may have discovered the biblical city of Bethsaida, the hometown of three of Jesus' apostles on the shores of the Sea of Galilee.
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MOUNT GERIZIM, West Bank (RNS) - During the recent Sukkot holiday, Yousef Sadaka HaCohen, a Samaritan priest, greeted guests eager to soak up the Samaritans' unique holiday traditions. Among those guests were several Israeli and Palestinian officials, who, on the rare occasions they get together these days, usually meet to coordinate security or air grievances.
JERUSALEM (RNS) - Avihu Mizrachi Minagen generally steers clear of politics, but he applauded President Trump's vow to move the U.S. Embassy to Israel from Tel Aviv and his declaration that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.
JERUSALEM (RNS) - Tens of thousands of Muslims heeded calls from their religious leaders to avoid prayers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in protest of new Israeli security measures at the Temple Mount. Only "several hundred" worshippers prayed inside the mosque at midday prayers Friday (July 21), according to Israel Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld.
TEL AVIV, Israel (RNS) It was Sunday - women's-only day - at the so-called religious beach in this Israeli city on the Mediterranean, and several hundred women and girls sat on the sand or frolicked in the gentle waves with an abandon they rarely exhibit elsewhere.
JERUSALEM - Tucked away behind a high stone wall in the Old City of Jerusalem lies a serene garden, two chapels and a Christian history museum few people know about.
JERUSALEM - The feeling on the Palestinian street is that President Barack Obama did too little to advance Palestinian statehood, deter Israeli settlement-building and protect the region's endangered minorities, and Palestinians - including Christians - aren't optimistic President-elect Donald Trump will be any better.
JERUSALEM - Israelis paid their respects Thursday to former President Shimon Peres as his body lay in state at the nation's parliament. Peres died Wednesday after suffering a stroke two weeks ago. He was 93. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin were among the hundreds of thousands of mourners expected to view Peres' body ahead of his state funeral here on Friday.
LOD, Israel - In the month since the Brussels Airport bombing, security agencies around the world are looking more closely at how Israel has pioneered ways to thwart airport terror attacks.
Jerusalem - While no one would call Israel a religiously pluralistic country, with its Orthodox control of the Chief Rabbinate, momentum in that direction seems to be building.
EFRAT, West Bank - When Mordechai Reich moved to this Jewish settlement seven miles south of Jerusalem in 1994, he wanted to study in a yeshiva, or seminary. He stayed in Efrat, once part of the biblical land of Israel, because he felt he could make a difference.
JERUSALEM - The first U.S. soldier to be recognized by Israel's Holocaust memorial authority as a "Righteous Gentile" was guided by his strong Christian faith, according to his son, a pastor. Earlier this year, Yad Vashem recognized Master Sgt. Roddie Edmonds, who served in the 422nd Infantry Regiment in the U.S.
ESH KODESH, West Bank (RNS) On this unauthorized hilltop outpost the only sound for miles around is of a dog barking or a rooster crowing. Just 40 young religious Jewish families live on this windswept spot some 30 miles north of Jerusalem, and on this January day most of their children - about 150 in total - are in school down the road in Shilo, the nearest Jewish settlement.
JERUSALEM - Julie Landau and his family will gather on Wednesday at the grave of his son, Yair, an Israeli soldier killed in action in 1982 at age 23. Landau, who moved from Brooklyn, N.Y., to Jerusalem in 1969, is one of the hundreds of bereaved American and Canadian citizens whose loved ones died in the service of Israel's military or in Israel-based terror attacks.
(RNS) Despite the nation's reputation for interreligious conflict, Jewish, Muslim and Christian co-workers often juggle schedules to make sure all can observe their respective traditions.
PUBLIC SPEAKING & PODCASTS
Rabbi Ron Kronish, the founding director and senior advisor of the Interreligious Coordinating Council of Israel talks about religious-secular tensions in Israel and of the religious ultra-nationalist camp that spawned Yigal Amir, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's assassin. USA TODAY's Michele Chabin reports. Photo Credit: AP
Articles
JERUSALEM - Hanin Zoabi, an Israeli Arab, believes Israeli Jews are colonialists who stole Palestinian land. She makes no distinction between the recent deaths of Israeli civilians and their attackers, calling both "victims of the Israeli occupation." Those are typical views of Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza, as well as some Arab citizens of Israel like Zoabi.
JERUSALEM - Dressed in skirts over their jeans and scarves on their heads, two teenage Palestinian girls from northern Jerusalem headed to downtown Jerusalem on Monday, took out scissors and stabbed a 70-year-old Palestinian man they had mistaken for an Israeli Jew.
BETHLEHEM, West Bank (RNS) The Palestinian Authority has asked municipalities to tone down their public Christmas celebrations this year amid escalating violence between Palestinians and Israelis. Hana Amireh, who heads a government committee on churches in the West Bank, confirmed the Palestinian Authority is requesting "a certain decrease" in festivities following the deaths of dozens of Palestinians since mid-September.
TEL AVIV, Israel (RNS) Just before Christmas, Nicole Perez and her friends went shopping for decorations in Tel Aviv's Central Bus Station. On the fourth floor, where Asian food stores and African hair weavers mostly cater to migrants and refugees, they bought Santa hats and Christmas lights.
JERUSALEM - Sigalit Greenbaum, who works in a bakery in the ultra-Orthodox Meah Shearim neighborhood in Jerusalem, has a great deal of faith in God. But on Tuesday morning (Oct.
Jerusalem - During the past couple of weeks, as the violence in and around Jerusalem and the West Bank has escalated, Roi Walther, a Jerusalem-based martial arts instructor in Gracie Jiu-Jitsu, a form of Brazilian self-defense, has noticed a big uptick in interest in his already popular classes.
YATIR FOREST, Israel - As Californians struggle with an ever-worsening water shortage caused by a historic drought, they might look east for a solution - to the Middle East. Israel, subject to intermittent droughts for decades, has pioneered a number of water-saving techniques.
JERUSALEM - A bomb police say was planted by Palestinian terrorists exploded on a public bus shortly after it was evacuated Sunday, resulting in no serious injuries. "Based on the findings at the scene by bomb disposal experts, it was a terrorist attack," police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told the Associated Press.
TEL AVIV, Israel - Shortly after the Nazi invasion of what was then Hungary in May 1944, Renee Ganz's family and most of the 25,000 Jews in the city of Oradea were forced into cattle cars and transported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.
A growing number of Israel's 160,000 indigenous Christians are volunteering for the military even though they are exempt. HEBRON HILLS, West Bank - Preparing his jeep for the short drive into the West Bank city of Hebron, where tensions between Palestinians and Israeli settlers often flare, Nabeel Sabbagh looked like every other Israeli Border Policeman serving at this hilltop base.
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The Jewish Week is an independent community newspaper offering the latest Israel, U.S. and New York news; features about Judaism, Jewish life, Jewish culture and Jewish dating; and articles about Jewish arts, Jewish food, Jewish travel and Jewish family life.
Israel's Beit Hatefutsot, the Museum of the Jewish People, is undergoing a total redesign, including changing its name from Museum of the Jewish Diaspora Museum. The Tel Aviv museum is a must-see destination on the itineraries of many U.S. tourists.
The Jewish Week is an independent community newspaper offering the latest Israel, U.S. and New York news; features about Judaism, Jewish life, Jewish culture and Jewish dating; and articles about Jewish arts, Jewish food, Jewish travel and Jewish family life.
Jerusalem - Dina Stein, a 24-year-old American-Israeli with a spunky demeanor and streaked blue hair, hopes recently revised regulations to Israel's medical marijuana program will put her on the fast track for a license to use the drug.
The Jewish Week is an independent community newspaper offering the latest Israel, U.S. and New York news; features about Judaism, Jewish life, Jewish culture and Jewish dating; and articles about Jewish arts, Jewish food, Jewish travel and Jewish family life.
The Jewish Week is an independent community newspaper offering the latest Israel, U.S. and New York news; features about Judaism, Jewish life, Jewish culture and Jewish dating; and articles about Jewish arts, Jewish food, Jewish travel and Jewish family life.
Personal Essays/Op Eds/wHoly Jerusalem Blog
This week I received an on-line invitation to an event in Tel Aviv: "Israel and the Media: Do We get a Fair Hearing?" In its promotional material the event, planned for February 23 and hosted by a speakers forum called Tel Aviv International Salon, noted that "there is no other conflict on earth that draws as much media attention as the one here between Israel and Palestinians.
JERUSALEM - Twenty years after Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated, it is still difficult to express the extent of the shock Israelis felt that November night. The first shock was the assassination itself, the first of its kind in Israel's history.