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Native Son

After Gen. David Petraeus, the greatest single influence on American counterinsurgency practice in Iraq and Afghanistan was a Tunisian-born Jew who has been dead more than 40 years.Re-Inventing the Statue of Liberty

Where did Emma Lazarus's ideas come from? She was not an immigrant; she was a fourth-generation American. And she was not among the huddled masses: her family was among New York's wealthiest. Welcome to Haredistan

A microstate with no army and a defense pact with its closest neighbor, Israel; a welfare state to make Scandinavians jealous; education, with small classes and long days, state-funded through college.Extremism, Ideology, Reform

We hear a lot about the ultra-Orthodox community's fractious encounters with outsiders. But is this growing extremism a reaction to dramatic changes within ultra-Orthodoxy itself?Three Talmudists Confront the Evil Urge

A symposium on the psychological, historical, and rabbinic development of the yetzer hara picks up where Jewish Ideas Daily left off.      Earthly Gardens

In defiance of the Holocaust, novelist Giorgio Bassani claims the Jamesian right to draw the circumference of his work where he wants it, where it is most artistically fitting.Japan’s Inner Israel

Both Japan and Israel rose from deprivation to prosperity in, historically speaking, the blink of an eye. But now Israel is punching far above its economic weight, while Japan can't seem to get off the mat. What happened?A Grief Observed

"Three and a half months it took me, but today when I woke I knew all of a sudden; all at once I was filled with the desire, with the need, to visit your grave": a young widower's kaddish.Vay’hi: Zealotry and Tolerance

The time of patriarchs was reaching its end. Jacob was dying, and alongside his dictation of burial arrangements, he also gave final words to his twelve sons, words in which he would tell them "what will befall you in the end of days." We usually read them as his final "blessings." But in the case of two sons, Simeon and Levi, they are assuredly curses.