Hyphen Nation
From my column this week, a response to the hyphen-haters:
The hyphen is indeed a dangerous symbol, because it has the ability to yoke together two different, sometimes contradictory sensibilities. Try it: Jewish-American, liberal-Orthodox, secular-nationalist, traditional-Reform. It’s a miracle of union and compromise — just like marriage.
Read the whole thing.
JustASC is written by Andrew Silow-Carroll, Editor-in-Chief of the 
January 10th, 2008 at 9:25 am
A friend writes:
Not to mention the fairly recent trend among Israelis. The law requires government officials to change their Golus names to Hebrew ones when they are sent abroad to represent Israel - think of Golda Meir, Moshe Shertok etc. The new thing is to proudly retain the ancestral name and hyphenate it to the new Zionist name - as in Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, Aharon Farkash-Ze’evi etc. I was once at a New Israel Fund event and during question period somebody asked the speaker how it happened that the Israeli army had promoted so many out-there feminists to such high command positions, citing Lipkin-Shahak.