Jewish Ideas Daily

Thursday, September 2

Tashlich, Kate Chester

Repentance = Freedom?

In the thick of the month of Ellul, nearing Rosh Hashanah, penitence is or should be in the air. Also recently marked was the 75th yahrzeit of the great mystic, jurist, and theologian Abraham Isaac Kook (1865-1935). As it turns out, Kook's teachings on the meaning of repentance are among his most striking, stamped with his distinctive mix of piety and audacity. In his eyes, teshuvah, generally translated as "repentance" but literally and more powerfully "return," signifies not only a deepened and renewed commitment to religion and commandments but, paradoxically, nothing less than a new birth of freedom. READ ON
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Wednesday, September 1

Cemetery Politics

Among the many bones its various enemies pick with the Jewish state, one has been much in the news lately: bones, very dry bones, residing in cemeteries both real and imagined all across the country. READ ON
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Tuesday, August 31

Arab Moderates: Help, or Hindrance?

At the re-launching of direct talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, attention will be focused on Mahmoud Abbas and Benjamin Netanyahu. But Egypt's ailing president, Hosni Mubarak, will also be in attendance, as will Jordan's King Abdullah II. To maintain their bona fides as Arab moderates, the two men helped cajole Abbas to resume face-to-face negotiations with Israel. So did other Arab states in the U.S. orbit, including Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the Emirates. READ ON
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Monday, August 30

Ronald S. Lauder.

World Jewish Congress

In a show of solidarity with Israel, leaders of the World Jewish Congress (WJC) will be gathering in Jerusalem at the end of the month. Not to be confused with the American Jewish Congress, of which it was originally an outgrowth, or the World Zionist Congress, founded by Theodor Herzl, the WJC is an umbrella group of Diaspora organizations (including the European Jewish Congress, the Latin American Jewish Congress, and others) that defines itself somewhat grandly as "the diplomatic arm of the Jewish people." If you haven't heard of it, there's a reason. READ ON
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Friday, August 27

Rabbis Shapira and Elitzur.

A Grim Teaching

Every first-year law student knows that hard cases make bad law. In Israel, a particularly hard case lies in the ongoing controversy around an inflammatory Hebrew-language volume of Jewish religious law (halakhah) that offers justifications for violent treatment of non-Jews in general and of Israel's foes in particular. The debate has highlighted longstanding divisions within Israeli society; now that the courts and the police have gotten into the act, it has also highlighted the difficulties of drawing meaningful lines between free speech and incitement. READ ON
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Thursday, August 26

Yossi Vassa

It Sounds Better in Amharic

In his one-man play, It Sounds Better in Amharic, the Ethiopian-born Israeli actor Yossi Vassa humorously contrasts life in the old world and the new, mulling over the differences between traditional and modern ways of dating and the respective virtues of traveling by donkey or Lamborghini. He also narrates his family's 400-mile journey from Ethiopia to Sudan—from where, in 1984, the Israeli air force flew 8,000 Ethiopian Jews to Israel. Vassa's family covered the 400 miles on foot, in three months. "Not to brag," he comments, "but it took the children of Israel 40 years." READ ON
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Wednesday, August 25

Members, Im Tirtzu

Zionism Derangement Syndrome

A smoldering resentment, bordering on political paranoia, is palpable in sectors of Israel's Left these days. Everywhere, it seems, powerful enemies are conspiring to undermine the centers of cultural influence that leftists have long regarded as their own property, and as beyond criticism. Their response bears a resemblance to the left-wing American affliction that the columnist Charles Krauthammer memorably labeled "Bush Derangement Syndrome." READ ON
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Tuesday, August 24

Sol Levitas, 1958.

Requiem for a Big Little Magazine

After eighty-six years, eighty-two in print and the last few in cyberspace, the New Leader, a quintessential American "little magazine," is folding. Like all good publications, it both embodied and analyzed a world of its own, a world worth remembering. READ ON
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Monday, August 23

On Eagles' Wings

The story of Israel's determination to survive is inextricably linked to the military aircraft deployed to defend its skies and take the battle to the enemy. A new chapter is now opening with the decision by Defense Minister Ehud Barak to approve, pending cabinet ratification, the purchase from the United States of twenty F-35 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft at a base price of $96 million each. The manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, promises the new jet will be capable of penetrating the most sophisticated air defenses. Unfortunately, the plane is only now going into production and won't reach the Israel Air Force for at least five years—too late to play a role in any immediate solution to the Iranian nuclear threat. READ ON
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Friday, August 20

Digging King Herod

King Herod was a Jew of doubtful origin who ruled Israel in the years 40-4 B.C.E. During this same period, the Roman republic was being replaced by the Roman Empire with its vast expansionist aims. Relying on Roman support for his power, Herod was, in effect, Israel's little Roman emperor. And he played the part, bringing administrative order and economic prosperity to the country and creating hugely ambitious architectural projects. In the Roman way, he was also cruel, paranoid, and thorough, killing his wife, three sons, and an assortment of other relatives and confidants. READ ON
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One Nation, Under God Dov S. Zackheim, Foreign Policy Research Institute. The ancient Israelite experience in nation-building differed from the American experience in many ways; but what is striking, and not accidental, are the similarities. SAVE

Classical Islam and the Jews Hagai Mazuz, Hudson New York. The root of the Israel-Arab conflict is not territorial but religious. Part I; part II is here. SAVE

Partners in Apartheid? James Kirchik, Commentary. A serious attempt to reconstruct the historical relationship between Israel and South Africa is marred by manipulative, irresponsible, and offensive speculation. SAVE

A Jerusalem Childhood Miriam Gross, Standpoint. The longtime literary editor of the (London) Sunday Telegraph recalls her years as the child of German Jewish refugees in 1940's Jerusalem. SAVE

Is Diss a System? David Spencer, H-Net. A new book explicates the work of the American cartoonist and storyteller Milt Gross (Nize Baby, Dunt Ask!, etc.), who flourished in the 1920s and 30s—and whom it would be a colossal error to judge from a 21st-century perspective. SAVE

Wednesday, September 1

What is Moderate Islam? Wall Street Journal. The controversy over a proposed mosque in lower Manhattan has spurred a wider debate about Islam; six leading thinkers weigh in. A symposium. SAVE

Aligned with Liberty Sol Stern, New Criterion. Norman Podhoretz's break with the Left led to one of the most dramatic moments in American and American Jewish history of the last half-century; a new biography tells the whole story. SAVE

Mutual Enemies, Mutual Interests Ksenia Svetlova, Jerusalem Post. Kurds want Israelis to know they have friends in the Middle East—perhaps their only ones. SAVE

Ancient Plastic? Aisha Mohammed, Seattle Times. Thousands of recycled flint shards have been found in a fire pit near Tel Aviv: the world's oldest known disposable knives? SAVE

Unleavened Politics Fred MacDowell, On the Main Line. In a declassified 1976 document, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and the president of the ultra-Orthodox Agudath Israel discuss the shipment of matzah into the Soviet Union. SAVE

Tuesday, August 31

Crackdown in France Devorah Lauter, JTA. President Nicolas Sarkozy's tough new security-related initiatives have earned widespread denunciation—but not from French Jews. SAVE

Alphabet Coup Anson Rainey, Orly Goldwasser, Biblical Archaeology Review. Who invented the alphabet: sophisticated West Semitic scribes, or illiterate turquoise miners? A debate. SAVE

No Such Thing Tamar Sternthal, CAMERA. The former head of Meretz has applauded a boycott by Israeli theater professionals who won't be "dragged" to the settlement of Ariel on "Jewish-only apartheid roads." Which roads are those? SAVE

Both Sides Now Trymaine Lee, New York Times. Black Orthodox Jews, who form insular but highly energized communities, are making inroads in public awareness. SAVE

Sephardi Siren Rahel Musleah, Hadassah. Yasmin Levy, whose music is like a "deep pool of exquisite yearning and heartbreak," is the international voice—and face—of Ladino song. SAVE

Monday, August 30

Mixed Emotions Elizabeth Weingarten, Atlantic. Iranian Jews in America straddle at least three different societies and identities; still, they build their homes of brick, to last. SAVE

Greek Justice Richard Ayoun, Abravanel. Those arrested in the devastating double arson of an exquisitely restored 16th-century Cretan synagogue will evidently not face trial; a pattern is at work here. (Scroll down for English text.) SAVE

Does Halakhah Change? Francis Nataf, Jewish Book Review. Innovation in Jewish religious law is natural; but, as a new book suggests, everything depends on the context and the circumstances. SAVE

Through a Warped Lens John Podhoretz, Weekly Standard. When it comes to the Holocaust, even a documentary based on original footage, like Yael Hersonski's A Film Unfinished, has more in common with other movies than with the experience it depicts. SAVE

Not Your Grandmother’s Candlesticks Menachem Wecker, Jewish Press. To view the works exhibited at a recent show of contemporary ritual Judaica is to ask where the line should be drawn between Jewish art and Jewish kitsch. SAVE

Friday, August 27

Triple Play Tarek Heggy, Hudson New York. Egypt, like the rest of the Arab world, has many problems, of which the three most immediate are identity, education, and democracy. SAVE

Mountain Jews Sarah Marcus, Tablet. Two-and-a-half millennia ago, a band of Jews passed through Persia and settled in the Caucasus mountains, where amid growing hardship they maintain their culture today. SAVE

Arrested Development Renee Ghert-Zand, Forward. Today, adulthood comes later and later. Why should the age of bar mitzvah stay the same? SAVE

Unknown Homeland Lina Sinjab, BBC. Multi-generational Palestinian "refugees" are not necessarily eager to return to their ancestral homes. SAVE

Do I Forget Thee, O Jerusalem? Theodore Sasson, Benjamin Phillips, Charles Kadushin, Leonard Saxe, Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies. A June 2010 survey finds the majority of American Jews still attached to Israel, with those under forty-five somewhat less so; political ideology is not a factor. (PDF.) SAVE

To Be Self-Fruitful and Multiply Gilit Chomsky, Ynet. Orthodox women who find themselves single at a certain age are having children on their own, absent a unified rabbinic position. SAVE

Nitzavim-Vayelekh: The Last Mitzvah

Deuteronomy 29:9 – 31:30

By Moshe Sokolow

A well-known talmudic tradition reports that there are exactly 613 mitzvot (commandments) in the Torah. Of the total, 248 are positive (the do's), while 365 are negative (the don'ts). Not all the sages are in complete agreement on this enumeration, with some arriving at a higher number. But the custom has long been to speak of 613 mitzvot—or, in Hebrew, taryag mitzvot, based on the numeric values assigned to letters of the Hebrew alphabet.

Continue Reading "The Last Mitzvah" Moshe Sokolow. SAVE

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