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Let My People InThursday, January 14, 2010 | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Debates over conversion to Judaism show no sign of abating, least of all in Israel. Last week, the legal adviser to the country's chief rabbinate declared that all conversions may retroactively be annulled at any time. In the ensuing firestorm of criticism, even some on the religious Right chimed in, especially those reflecting a historically more lenient Sephardi approach. A great deal of institutional politics is involved here, including between the ultra-Orthodox in Israel and the Modern Orthodox in the United States; some of this came to light in the recent disgrace and resignation of an ultra-Orthodox foe of the moderates....
Thursday, January 14, 2010 by Christopher Rollston | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
Questioning the claim that a recently deciphered inscription represents the oldest Hebrew writing ever found.The Arab Dilemma
Thursday, January 14, 2010 by Philip Terzian | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
A new book by a close observer argues that the Arab world, though beset by self-destructive furies, is not so much in decline as in transition.The End of the Turkish-Israeli Alliance
Wednesday, January 13, 2010 by Anat Lapidot-Firilla | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
A consequence not of Israeli policy but of a strategic shift in Turkey's perception of its place in Muslim civilization and international power politics.Tossing the Genetic Dice
Wednesday, January 13, 2010 by Sachin Prashar | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
Do India's Pathans, the ethnic group at the heart of the Taliban, have Jewish roots? Whatever the DNA may show, today's Pathans are as hostile to Israel as are Muslims elsewhere.A Priceless Manuscript Goes Online
Wednesday, January 13, 2010 | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
Containing comments on the Zohar, the classic work of Jewish mysticism, this is one of only four authentic documents by the hand of the Gaon of Vilna (1720–1797).Fear and Trembling: A Week in England
Wednesday, January 13, 2010 | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
To a visiting American Israeli blogger, English Jews display shocking signs of a fearfulness both physical and psychological.American Aid to Israel: The Numbers
Wednesday, January 13, 2010 by David Hazony | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
Over the past two decades, by every reasonable measure, U.S. aid has plummeted.
The Harshness of CreationLike the 2004 tsunami that devastated southeast Asia, yesterday's catastrophic earthquake in Haiti, a poverty-stricken country with a legacy of home-grown violence and suffering, inevitably provoked the terrible question: where was God? One answer derives from Jewish religious sources, and specifically from the teachings of the Kabbalah. It has to do with tzimtzum, or contraction: that is, God's own contraction and limitation of Himself in order to make space for the finite—and invariably flawed—worlds of physical nature and human action. The idea was most famously developed in Safed, Palestine by the 16th-century kabbalist Isaac Luria as part of a complicated, esoteric myth...
Tuesday, January 12, 2010 by Hillel Halkin | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
An international best-seller makes one decent point, all but drowned in an ocean of puerile shoddiness, distortion, and falsehood.
