Article Archives

Life from the Lab

Led by J. Craig Venter, genetic scientists have created a partially synthetic, self-replicating bacterial cell. According to an account in the May Science, the team built a synthetic genome from scratch and then put it into a living natural cell. Although the result does not qualify as a truly synthetic life form, Venter's achievement has been hailed as bringing us "a step closer to artificial life" and as a "defining moment" in the history of biology.

Russia and Israel

Nineteen years after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Communist empire, Russia has reconstituted its role as a significant player in the Middle East and Islamic world. What does it want? Mainly, influence, stability, and the opportunity to make a great deal of money selling weapons. While not driven by ideology, as in the cold war, these goals are mostly out of sync with Israel's.

The Besht

Last week's Shavuot holiday marked the 250th yahrzeit of Israel ben Eliezer, the founder of Hasidism, known to history as the Baal Shem Tov or, abbreviated, the Besht. His death was only the beginning; the legend of the Besht, and the many interpretations of his sayings and deeds, gave birth to one of the most dynamic and consequential movements in Jewish history.

It’s Magic

"Spirituality," a key phrase of our time, suggests a yearning for contact with an ungraspable realm beyond earthly experience. Yet for most of history, the spiritual realm was deemed eminently graspable indeed—as is evidenced by a fascinating exhibit now in Jerusalem.

Measuring Jews

In 1882, there were 24,000 Jews in the land of Israel, a tenth as many as in the United States at the time and a mere 0.3 percent of the world Jewish population.  Today, a decade into the 21st century, Israel is solidifying its place as the cultural and demographic hub of Jewish life. Out of 13 million Jews worldwide, 5.7 million live in Israel, as opposed to an estimated 5.5 million in the U.S. Roughly 60 percent of Jewish Israelis are now native-born; fifty years ago, the same percentage was foreign-born. Despite an average monthly wage of but $2,100.00, most...

Israel’s Home Front

At precisely 11 A.M. tomorrow, May 26, the sirens of war will echo throughout Israel. The army is conducting its annual week-long series of home-front drills to prepare the police, hospitals, emergency services, volunteer agencies, and civilians to cope with the possibility of an unprecedented onslaught of rockets or missiles laden with high explosives or chemical warheads. Authorities are presenting the exercise as routine.  Although civilians who can do so have been instructed to enter a protected area like a communal bomb shelter or private reinforced-concrete room, those for whom participation in the drill would cause "unreasonable disruption" have been advised...

Talmud for Everyone?

Later this year, a milestone in contemporary Jewish learning will be reached with the completion of the Steinsaltz translation of the Talmud from its rabbinic Hebrew-and-Aramaic original into modern Hebrew. First begun in 1965, this project has had a transforming effect on non-Orthodox Israeli culture.  The work is the brainchild of Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz. Born in 1937 to secular parents who nevertheless saw to his education in Jewish classics, he studied math, physics, chemistry, and sociology before turning to religion, publishing books on the Bible and Jewish mysticism, and creating a network of high schools offering a rare blend of Talmud,...

ArtScroll, Inc.

Since its creation in 1976, the Orthodox publishing empire known as ArtScroll has brought out hundreds of titles: English translations of classic texts like the Bible, the siddur (prayer book), the Talmud, and others as well as self-help books, histories, biographies, fiction, and even cookbooks.  All are marked by traditional scholarship, decent English, handsome and often innovative typography and graphics—and an unabashedly ultra-Orthodox (haredi) viewpoint. Advertised and marketed with acumen and zeal, ArtScroll has swept the English-speaking Orthodox world and made surprising inroads among non-Orthodox readers as well.  A newly published study, Orthodox by Design, provides the first scholarly investigation of the...

Israel’s Nuclear Weapons

On April 5, 2009, speaking before throngs of supporters in a Prague square, President Barack Obama declared America's commitment to a world without nuclear weapons. With this as an apparent impetus, the Arab world has pressed for greater international attention to . . . Israel's nuclear activities. It did so most recently at a Washington conference devoted to keeping nuclear materials out of terrorist hands, and at a subsequent review conference on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) at UN headquarters in New York. Under Arab prodding, the permanent members of the UN Security Council, including the U.S., issued a statement calling...

Book of Ruth

The biblical book of Ruth, read later this week on the holiday of Shavuot, works in brief, gentle strokes to limn a powerful story of loss, recovery, and redemption. The story takes place in harvest season, in a prosaic world in which the actions of divine providence are coterminous with the yield of human goodness. "This scroll speaks neither of impurity nor purity, neither of forbidden nor permitted," says a famous midrash. "And why was it written? To teach you how great is the reward of those who mete out lovingkindness" (Midrash Ruth Rabbah 2:16). The theme asserts itself in the book's...