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Partners in Apartheid?Thursday, September 2, 2010 by James Kirchick | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
A serious attempt to reconstruct the historical relationship between Israel and South Africa is marred by manipulative, irresponsible, and offensive speculation.A Jerusalem Childhood
Thursday, September 2, 2010 by Miriam Gross | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
The longtime literary editor of the (London) Sunday Telegraph recalls her years as the child of German Jewish refugees in 1940's Jerusalem.Is Diss a System?
Thursday, September 2, 2010 by David Spencer | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
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.One Nation, Under God
Thursday, September 2, 2010 by Dov S. Zackheim | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
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.
Repentance = Freedom?Thursday, September 2, 2010 by Yehudah Mirsky | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
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.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010 by Moshe Sokolow | Jewish Ideas Daily » Weekly Portions
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.
Cemetery PoliticsWednesday, September 1, 2010 by Allan Nadler | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
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.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010 by Sol Stern | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
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.Mutual Enemies, Mutual Interests
Wednesday, September 1, 2010 by Ksenia Svetlova | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
Kurds want Israelis to know they have friends in the Middle East—perhaps their only ones.Ancient Plastic?
Wednesday, September 1, 2010 by Aisha Mohammed | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
Thousands of recycled flint shards have been found in a fire pit near Tel Aviv: the world's oldest known disposable knives?

