I think that a serious discussion of whether Israel is, or even resembles, an apartheid state has to break the question down into (at least) two parts.  The first part is, is Israel proper an apartheid state?  There I would agree with you that the answer is an unequivocal "no," for the reasons you gave and others.  Instead, I would characterize Israel as a democratic state in which a minority experiences de jure and de facto discrimination and inequality at the hands of the majority.  Much like the United States.  Sure, Jews and Arabs in Israel go to the same hospitals, but they don't have the same infant mortality rates, or employment rates, or education statistics, or access to political power, or amount of running water and funding for their villages, etc.  (Not to speak of even less fortunate sub-minorities like the Bedouin in the Negev desert).

The second part of the question is whether the Israeli-occupied West Bank is, or operates like, an apartheid state.  Without answering the question or indulging in the rhetoric, I would point out that the analysis is a lot more complicated.  Israeli Jews who live in the West Bank vote in Israeli elections, Palestinian Arabs who live there don't.  Israeli Jews who live in the West Bank drive cars with regular Israeli yellow license plates, Palestinian Arabs who live there don't.  Israeli Jews who live in the West Bank can travel freely into Israel proper for work every day on their own roads, Palestinian Arabs who live there take separate roads in many cases and are subject to military checkpoints.  Obviously, the list goes on.  I don't think that the answers you gave above work the same way for these groups of people who live side by side but have different status.  I would be interested in hearing your analysis of this part of the question.

Your essay reminds me of my aunt's response when a telemarketer called and asked her (using the wrong last name) whether she had three extra minutes.  She answered, "If I had three extra minutes, I'd shave my armpits.  Goodbye."

 My dad's way of ending dinner parties also comes to mind:  1. Stand up (even if the guest is mid-sentence).  2.  Clap once.  3.  Say, "Well, it's time for you to go home now."  Works like a charm.

I have a nice, big, gauche-even diamond engagement ring.  I didn't buy it, and neither did my husband.  My father-in-law bought it for my mother-in-law.  When they got divorced, her friends told her to sell it and buy a TV.  Instead, she tossed it in a safe deposit box, where it collected dust until almost ten years ago.  At that point, she gave it to us because, hey, diamonds are forever.

 I share this story because I feel like the article verges on assuming that people who wear diamond rings are somehow morally inferior to those who wear hip rings from the MOMA.  People, can we stop assuming that we can gauge anything meaningful about others' moral worth by looking at what they're wearing?  Righteousness in purchase decisions is great; self-righteousness and judging others isn't.  I extend this principle to fur coats.  I don't look harshly on the (mostly elderly) women in my neighborhood who wear coats (and there are many!  it's the bronx baby), especially since I started listening to them on the bus and realizing that many come from the former Soviet Union and may be struggling in this country, with the unhip fur coat being the warmest thing they've got.  Let us dismount from our high horses please!

I don't understand why people can't get married during college and still have their careers.  Where's the conflict?  Getting married doesn't take up all that much time.  Many, many people marry during some part of their education (often graduate school) and nobody thinks twice about it.  Why should getting married during college be so different?  To the extent the concern is missing out on "dorm life," I don't buy it.  Lots of people, including commuters, many state school students, and others opt out of dorm life because it's too intense, too expensive, or because living in such close quarters with people who are all their age just weirds them out.  While I enjoyed dorm life, I respect people who have other things to do with their time and money.  Married people can still get an education (I know; I was married for most of law school, and I learned plenty).

 What does change the picture is having children, because babies take up a lot of time.  But, as another commenter noted, this is true whether the parents are in college, high school, graduate school, or working.  I had my first baby while I was about to start a clerkship and my husband was doing his phd -- maybe it slowed us down a little, but that's life if you want to have kids.  Again, I don't see why this is a problem.  Perhaps someone who has a baby during college will take extra semesters to graduate, or even additional years.  I don't see that as a tragedy, particularly where both parents share the burden.

In short, I don't see why this article generated so much anger and concern.  Arguably it's better to get baby-having "out of the way" early in one's eductation, so that you're not derailed or taken off-guard by the time-consuming nature of childraising in your mid-30's as many of my Jewish friends are when they have children. 

1.  For whatever it's worth to BT, I have babies (okay, stinky preschoolers) and am what you would probably call a leftist.  Still not sure why this is relevant, but I hope that helps.

 2.  Who cares whether religious people or atheists give more charity?  My perspective on this is that, since I'm Jewish, I'm going to turn to Jewish sources and the Jewish community to motivate me to do good deeds and give away money.  If someone else feels more comfortable finding that motivation in a Christian church, ethical humanist essays, or Al Gore's movies, that's great and I applaud them. 

 3.  One of my favorite things about being Jewish is that there is a long tradition of active Jews who either believe there is no god or aren't sure whether there is a god, or waver between those two positions and a firm belief in the Jewish God.  The best part is that Judaism doesn't let us off the hook either way.  You don't cease to be Jewish even on weeks when you're feeling very atheistic.  Even on days when I'm pretty sure there is no god and that, even if there is a higher power, it's unlikely to resemble the version portrayed in the Jewish Bible, I still have to do my best to do mitzvot and engage in Jewish humor if I want to stay true to 5000 years' worth of my ancestors.  So, I (usually) try to pray, give tzedakah, get my kids to say brachot before chowing down, bake challah on Fridays, and so on, even if I'm feeling dubious about God's actual existence.  In doing so, I don't feel that far removed from either my atheist great-aunt who used her Jewish energy to found a kibbutz or from her father, a Belarussian rabbi who must have had his low-belief days.

Tamar and Uriah:

I actually don't find it that complicated.  The happy medium for me is about comfort, practicality, and setting-specific models of appropriateness.  So, if it's an office, I wear business casual or a suit, if it's the supermarket I wear jeans and a T-shirt (if it's hot) or sweater (if it's cold), and at the beach I wear a bathing suit (although I am a total sucker for those little skirts that go on the bathing suit, and think they should be mandatory for everyone).  It must the American-Protestant heritage that even we Jews have absorbed:  moderation in all things.

Tarfon:  I take your point, although I still think that my assessment of the situation I went through is actually the correct one, but I'd have to give you too many details to explain why to be worth it.  I do agree that part of why my solution (that is, do nothing) worked was because I was living in a community where lots of women -- interestingly, the 40-60 year olds more than the ones my age -- were not covering their hair.  And the community (including the rabbi in question) was entrusting these non-hair-covering women to educate their kids, prepare their food, etc., so they obviously didn't feel all that strongly that exposed hair was bad. 

 I do think my point still stands that often, the hair covering turns into occasions for sexy hats and scarves, thereby defeating the supposed purpose.  And I still stand by my experience that just being yourself and focusing on what's important will get people to back off on a lot of these issues about women's roles and proper behavior.  For example, I have worn my tallit in many synagogues where I was the only woman wearing one (including in a community where I lived for several years), and again, people got over it pretty quickly, despite fears (by others, not me) that everyone would freak out.

Tamar,

Thank you for raising the issue of tzniut.  I am hoping that Yeshivat/Machon Hadar will take on tzniut as a requirement or set of requirements that deserves, but hasn't gotten (as far as I'm aware), some sophisticated treatment by feminist observant Jews.  I am not talking about the philosophical tzniut of character that you talk about at the end, but about tzniut as a concept that governs how we present ourselves physically/aesthetically when we are out in the world.  At the moment, the doctrine of tzniut has become an oppressive caricature, because many of the people who take it seriously are people who do things like make five-year-old girls wear wool stockings in the middle east in the summertime.  I realized just how degraded the concept of tzniut has become when a neighbor of mine on a religious kibbutz (a woman whose hair is always covered outside the house) told me that she doesn't use the word "tzniut" in her own home, because she doesn't want her girls to grow up with the "tzel" (literally "shadow") of that concept hanging over them, the way she apparently did.  In short, tzniut is headed either for the round-file or -- I hope -- for a serious salvage operation.

I have had some ideas about what tzniut means to me.  It incorporates concepts like personal space and boundaries (e.g, teaching my kids that they can maintain a sense of personal space and don't have to allow themselves to be given backrubs at camp by every pimply kid who approaches them), self-respect in dress (not making idiots of ourselves and treating our bodies with respect), and reserving (some kinds of?) physical intimacy for those relationships that actually ARE intimate in the emotional and commitment sense.  It's less about telling people what they should and shouldn't wear, and more about encouraging all of us to ask whether our presentation and behaviors are really doing us justice as beings created in God's image.  It challenges is us to consider whether we can really achieve the goal of treating other people as holy if we are not even treating ourselves that way.

Any other ideas?   -Ariela