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FakesThursday, February 11, 2010 | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
The celebrated French intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy had some explaining to do this week when it emerged that a philosopher he'd respectfully cited was a figment of somebody else's imagination. Jewish history boasts its own roster of hoaxes and fabrications. Most famously, the Zohar, purportedly the teaching of talmudic mystics, was largely written in the 13th century. Another product of the Middle Ages was a pseudo-talmudic text imposing extraordinary stringencies on menstruating women. In both cases, the authors clearly believed they were enunciating things that the ancients must have themselves believed. The authors of the Golem legend similarly believed that if Rabbi...
Wednesday, February 10, 2010 | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
Ambassador Michael Oren is shouted down at the University of California; the historian Benny Morris is shut out from the University of Cambridge.Longing for the Extinct Jew
Wednesday, February 10, 2010 by Vered Zayakovsky | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
On the art of the Bulgarian-born Moni Ovadia, star of Italian theater, and his audience.
The Heart or the Head?Wednesday, February 10, 2010 | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
In recent decades, "brain death," the cessation of all neurological activity, has increasingly supplanted cardiac-respiratory failure as the most widely accepted medical criterion of death. This definitional shift has helped mitigate the often ruinous toll on families of caring for patients whose hearts can be artificially kept beating in the absence of even the simplest brain function. It has also saved lives, by facilitating the process of preserving and donating organs for transplantation. Fundamental to Judaism is the idea that human beings are created in the divine image. This affirmation of human dignity finds practical expression in the thoroughgoing prohibition on murder...
Wednesday, February 10, 2010 by Ailene Voisin | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
The Sacramento Kings rookie is already celebrated as a hero; now all he has to do is earn it.On the Study of Hate
Wednesday, February 10, 2010 by Eric Herschthal | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
At Indiana University, a new center joins the handful of academic research institutes focusing on contemporary forms of anti-Semitism.Kosher Road Food, 18th-Century Style
Wednesday, February 10, 2010 | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
Throughout Europe, inns provided separate cabinets with pots and pans for travelers observing kashrut.“I Will Not Back Down”
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 by Hans Hoying and Christoph Schult | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
Declaring that "the road to a political solution is blocked," Mahmoud Abbas has a "warning for the world: do not drive the Palestinians to the point of total hopelessness."Pocketbook Terrorism
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 by Devin Leonard | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
Treating terrorists as rational actors, a new book proposes ways of putting them out of business; but are they rational actors?“Jewball”
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 by Michel Martin | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
A film documentary about Jews in the early years of professional basketball dwells on their urban style of play.
