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In New Knesset, a True Maverick
posted on March 1, 2013Daniella Cheslow of Tablet profiles Ruth Calderon, a Talmud scholar recently elected to Israel’s Knesset as part of the new party, Yesh Atid. Led by former journalist Yair Lapid, Yesh Atid wants to “renegotiate the relationship between religious and secular in Israel.” In keeping with the party ideas, Calderon’s debut speech to parliament included teaching Talmud. “Calderon ended her talk with a prayer, calling out to the ‘God of her fathers and mothers’ to help her and her party do good work in government,” Cheslow writes “The speech went viral, gaining almost 200,000 eyeballs within a week—and it was certainly the only time when a female member of Knesset taught about the Talmud.”