Chanukah was not only a struggle for simple religious freedom; it was also a revolt against financial desecration. The Greek-Seleucid oppression before Chanukah is usually remembered for forced Hellenization: bans on Torah observance, desecration of the Temple, and attempts to erase Jewish identity. But there was another, less discussed dimension of the tyranny: economic persecution used as a religious weapon. This was not ordinary imperial taxation. The Seleucid regime treated the Temple...

Many people in Israel, especially US expats, say the past year felt financially brutal. There’s a clear reason, and official statistics don’t fully capture it. If the currency of your income is not indexed to the shekel, your buying power can quietly shrink even if your salary never changes. For USD earners in Israel, two things happened at once in 2025:  • Local prices officially rose about 3%, in a year which was widely regarded as having high inflation across the board, fueled by a 1%...

For the last few years, we’ve all seen the TikTok and Instagram “tax hack” videos: “Write off your whole life” “Turn your vacation into a deduction” “Pay no self-employment tax with this one trick!” Most of these came from well-meaning but clueless young influencers who didn’t understand the Internal Revenue Code or even basic tax principles.  Bad advice, but easy to spot. But something has changed, and it’s far more dangerous. We’re now seeing licensed CPAs and EAs posting the same type of...