BARI WEISS

I hate New Year's Eve.

I'd venture a bet that no American hates 'Prairie Home Companion' more than I do.

I think 'Les Demoiselles D'Avignon' is one of the most transfixing paintings of all time. And it was made by a monster of a man.

Literally everything good about this culture comes from mixing.

To many American Jews, it is a truism that Barack Obama was the anti-Israel president. It was Mr. Obama who signed the Iran deal, which Israel portrayed as a mortal danger. It was Mr. Obama whose most contentious relationship with a foreign leader was with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Shutting down conservatives has become de rigueur. But now anti-free-speech activists are increasingly turning their ire on free-thinking progressives.

Anti-Semitism is the hatred that never dies. Violence that begins with the Jews never ends with them. All of this is true. What's also true is that anti-Semitism is the oldest hatred in the world because individual people have sustained it in every generation. It cannot be defeated until we look these people and their ideologies in the face.

Only the likes of Piers Morgan would be opposed to a Miss America contest that promises to be more 'empowering' and 'inclusive.'

Part of the beauty of the way Australians hang out isn't just how relaxed it is, but the inclusive, rolling nature of how they socialize.

The Right has been damaged beyond belief by its embrace of Mr. Trump.

Australians have more fun. They just do. I guess I should not be surprised by this fact given that this is the place that birthed both Hugh Jackman and Kylie Minogue.

There's no question that I am biased toward the Hebrew calendar over the Gregorian one.

Just as every Jewish couple gets married under a canopy open on all four sides - a replica of the tent modeled for us by Abraham and Sarah - so must Jewish communities keep our tents open. This is the true source of our longevity and resilience.

Victimhood, in the intersectional way of seeing the world, is akin to sainthood; power and privilege are profane.

Tel Aviv was established in 1909 by a group of secular Jewish families; Judaism's origin story is about 2,000 years older.

Most women who go public with #MeToo stories are fearful for obvious reasons. There is the pain of reliving traumatic experiences. There is the rage of not being believed.

In my experience, American office Christmas parties mean that everyone gets a thimbleful of lukewarm Champagne in a plastic cup.

I believe that it's condescending to think that women and their claims can't stand up to interrogation and can't handle skepticism.

Despite the fact that the vast majority of Israeli Jews are not Orthodox, the ultra-Orthodox hold the keys not just to Israel's Jewish sacred places, but to the life cycle events - conversions, weddings, divorces, burials - of the country's more than six million Jews.

In the States, time with friends can feel a bit like those PETA videos of chickens on factory farms: slotted and squeezed into tight compartments.

'Believe women' only works as a rule of thumb when all women are good. That myth falls flat outside Victorian England.

Israel's highest aspiration may be to be a light among the nations, but it is also a normal nation, where regular people want to go about their business without a religious authority having a say.

One area where American Jews have something to teach Israel is religious pluralism, something that living in a democracy with a separation between church and state has helped us fine-tune.

If the standard for art is the decency of its creators, we're going to have a lot of empty museums.

Britain beat us to the abolition of slavery; the Isle of Man, New Zealand, and Finland all decided to give women the vote well before the United States. Eventually, we got smart and borrowed these egalitarian innovations.