Article Archives

Press Freedom, Israeli-Style

If, as Walter Lippmann wrote, the newspaper is the bible of democracy, the land of the Bible is exceptionally well endowed with that precious commodity.

Loving Jews, Hating Jews

In their new book, American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us, the sociologists Robert Putnam and David Campbell advance the striking claim that "Jews are the most broadly popular religious group in America today."

The Economist Strikes Again

The Economist is a curious publication.  A weekly newsmagazine published in London, it largely hews to a classical liberal (or libertarian) line in economics and a correspondingly conservative line in politics. In contrast to most newsmagazines today, it is also a rousing success.

Who Needs Hebrew?

In 1967, on a visit to Jerusalem, the American novelist Saul Bellow met Shmuel Yosef Agnon, Israel's Nobel laureate in literature. "This spare old man," Bellow would recall, "asked me if any of my books had been translated into Hebrew. If they had not been, I had better see to it immediately, because, he said, they would survive only in the Holy Tongue."

Under Fire

The second Lebanon war in the summer of 2006 forced Israelis to come to grips with the definitive end of the Oslo era and the shattering of two fundamental assumptions about the nature of their conflict with the Palestinians.

Lost & Found

In 1974, a strange letter from northeastern India landed on the desk of Israel's then Prime Minister Golda Meir. It was sent by a group of Indians claiming to be descendants of the biblical tribe of Menashe.

The Huguenot Connection

In the darkest hours of the Holocaust, the safest place for Jews in occupied Europe may have been the southern French hamlet of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon.

Comeback Kids?

Israeli elections are far off. But two familiar figures, only recently down and out, have re-emerged at opposite ends of the political spectrum, setting journalists and veteran observers to wonder about the future shape of things.

In the Portable Homeland

Heinrich Heine described the Bible as the Jews' portable homeland. Both it and its various and proliferating extensions through history have been the objects of intense exploration by modern Jewish scholars. What do the numerous books and articles published by these scholars have to tell us, and how much of their scholarship is relevant to daily life, or of interest beyond the circle of their fellow academics?

Southern Discomfort

What is behind the rush of South American countries to recognize a unilaterally declared "free and independent" state of Palestine? Answer: a myriad of contributing factors, and a single overriding one.