Search Results
You can also browse by author, browse by source, or view the archives.
Yehuda HaleviMonday, February 22, 2010 | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
How golden was the Jewish "Golden Age" of Spain: roughly, the 10th–11th centuries C.E.? In the era's once-popular reputation for Muslim-Christian-Jewish tolerance and coexistence (convivencia), it is increasingly easy to see an overused and overstated fiction; more and more, scholarship reveals just how conflicted a time it was, and how conditional was the "tolerance" extended to minority communities. Still, for Jews as for others it truly was a period of amazing cultural creativity and accomplishment, all the more astonishing in light of convivencia's constraints. Under Muslim rule, the most innovative Jewish achievements lay in the realms of poetry and philosophy. Standing at the summit of both,...
Monday, February 22, 2010 by James M. Lindsay and Ray Takeyh | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
Not unless it can be stopped short of becoming a nuclear power, which means not without a credible threat of military action.Why No Jewish Narnia
Monday, February 22, 2010 by Michael Weingrad | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
Is it a coincidence that Jews have contributed less to modern fantasy than to any other literary genre?Flirting with Damascus
Monday, February 22, 2010 by David Schenker | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
Washington's year of "engaging" with Syria has yielded few if any positive results, and is unlikely to produce more.A “White Intifada”
Monday, February 22, 2010 by Shaul Mishal and Doron Mazza | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
The shift toward a human-rights agenda in international diplomacy could lead to a new Palestinian strategy, and requires pre-emptive action by Israel.The Coca-Cola Rabbi
Monday, February 22, 2010 by Gail Lichtman | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
On the yortsayt of a remarkable figure of Southern Orthodoxy.If Israel Killed al-Mabhouh, Did it Have the Right?
Friday, February 19, 2010 by Alan M. Dershowitz | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
Legally and morally, yes.Israel is Back
Friday, February 19, 2010 by Guy Bechor | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
What concerns Israel's enemies more than anything else?Are Orthodox Couples Happier?
Friday, February 19, 2010 by Tamar Snyder | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
According to a new study—and despite many reasons not to be—they are.
Holy SocietiesFriday, February 19, 2010 | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
In the Hebrew calendar, Sunday February 21 is the seventh day of Adar, the date traditionally marking the death of Moses on Mount Nebo, overlooking Canaan, alone with God. The Lord's personal oversight of Moses' interment, in a place "unknown to this day" (Deuteronomy 34:6), inspired the rabbis of the Talmud to praise the act of burying the dead with dignity as an expression of true (because unrecompensed) kindness and indeed of imitatio dei, the injunction to follow God's ways. So it is that the seventh day of Adar is designated by tradition to honor the institution of the Hevra Kadisha, the "holy society"...
