Article Archives

Killing Rathenau

Walther Rathenau was neither a typical German Jew nor a traditional German statesman. Born into a wealthy industrialist family that had disowned its Jewish beliefs and practices and gaining political office late in life, Rathenau was the quintessential outsider.

Brandeis and Zionism, In and Out of Love

The Supreme Court is once again poised to define the role of government in American society; and Louis D. Brandeis, the first Jewish Supreme Court Justice, would have recognized the terms of the debate.

Catholics, Jews, and Jewish Catholics

Jews and Catholics in the English-speaking world have so much in common that they ought to make common cause more often than they actually do. The friction between them that sometimes catches fire is, as often as not, based on mutual ignorance and mistrust.

The Aircraft Plot

Forty-two years ago today, on June 15, 1970, a group of Soviet dissidents gathered at Smolny Airport outside Leningrad.  They had bought all the seats on a 12-passenger aircraft headed 240 miles northwest to Priozersk, near the Finnish border.

The Chained Wife

Yafa Friedman lives in a modest, two-story townhouse in Brooklyn. This past Sunday, the shades were drawn as a group of 30 protestors marched outside the house chanting, "Yafa Friedman—stop the abuse!"

Steal This Siddur

If anyone might be poised to understand how a project of decentralized authority and radically distributive ownership could operate in a market-based economy, it would be the treasurer of a kibbutz.

At the Edge of the Abyss

The striking thesis of a new work is that even before Hitler came to power, the prognosis for European Jewry was bleak: "The demographic trajectory was grim and, with declining fertility, large-scale emigration, increasing outmarriage, and widespread apostasy, foreshadowed extinction."

The Jewish Left, between History and Revelation

The association of Jews with leftist ideas and movements has been a fixture of Western politics for the past 150 years. But is the relationship logical and necessary, or is it historical and contingent?

The Six-Day War: Day Six

After five days spent battling Arab forces, Israel now faced a new opponent: time. With the Egyptians and Jordanians out of the war, and the Syrians having agreed to a ceasefire, the Security Council was becoming restless.

The Six-Day War: Day Five

Once Dayan decided against a limited attack in the Golan and opted instead to take the entire Heights, Israel's air force pounded the Syrians.  The Syrians had supposed the Israelis to be tired and intimidated by their incessant shelling . . .