Highlights from 2000

• No Free Rides
  It's early evening and I'm at the main hitchhiking station in Kiryat Shmonah, well within Katyusha range of the northern border. Dressed in my reservist's fatigues and combat boots and carrying an M-16 rifle, I'm waiting for someone to drive me closer to my unit, which is stationed on Mount Hermon. My watch ticks inexorably, from 6:30, to 7:30, to 8:30.
  
• Home Alone with the Taliban
  Afghanistan's last rabbi wants to join his family in Israel, but not without a Torah scroll that cost him 40 days in jail
  
• Beware the Light-Fingered Tourists
  Synagogues across Europe are being robbed of treasures worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. And police in Holland, where the crime wave is at its height, are reluctant to investigate.
  
• To Redeem a Daughter
  Four years ago, a New York Jewish woman was arrested on a bus in Peru, charged with terrorism, and jailed for life. The State Department says that the evidence used to convict Lori Berenson is false. So why is it left to her parents to fight a forlorn battle for her release?
  
• Source of Peace?
  The Middle East is running out of water. Consumption is rising, rainfall is dwindling, rivers and aquifers are becoming polluted and saline. Bitter experience suggests that, if nothing is done, thirst will breed conflict. And yet the solutions are out there, if only the region's leaders would adopt them.
  
• Games of Shame
  Even in the Olympic Games of 1936, the Nazis victimized Jews, just as the athletic achievements of black American Olympians served as a powerful statement against racism
  
• Why Did God Do This to Us?
  The Holocaust devastated the ultra-Orthodox community. And yet, for decades, open discussion was suppressed, failures of rabbinical leadership were ignored, and convenient anti-Zionist and anti-Reform theories were widely circulated. Only now, tentatively, is a new generation of thinkers beginning to honestly confront the catastrophe.
  
• The Virtual World of Yossi Vardi
  One stunning success has made Yossi Vardi the guru of Israeli high tech. Can he repeat it, and establish the Internet as Israel's virtual oil field?
  
• The Dwindling Appeal of Peace
  There's no audience in all of Israel like that of the Technion in Haifa. Lecturing to a hall full of its faculty and students is always a tough intellectual challenge, and a great pleasure at the same time.
  
• Birthrights and Wrongs
  The American students found their Jewish roots. But six months after they returned from the inaugural identity-building trip to Israel, the organizers are still putting together the follow-up programs.
  
• The Refugee Price Tag
  Palestinian officials begin to examine the previously taboo subject of compensation for the refugees of 1948, while Israel drops its old condition for reciprocal compensation for Jews from Arab countries
  
• A Different President, for Another Israel?
  While many of his supporters see his victory as a Sephardi triumph, Israel's new president, Moshe Katsav, really won the ceremonial job through mastering the art of back-room dealing
  
• Can Bashar al-Asad Deliver on His Promises?
  In the first tentative weeks of his rule, Bashar al-Asad has fueled a feel-good factor in Syria by maintaining a crackdown on corruption, promising economic reform, and ending the personality cult that surrounded his father. And already, there are signs of a new openness, a new outspokenness taking hold among his people. But the raised expectations could swiftly turn to bitter disappointment - and instability - if the young new leader fails to deliver.
  
• Making Ends Meet, Israeli-style
  How to make ends meet under seemingly impossible circumstances in one easy lesson
  

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