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What Bothered the CensorMonday, January 11, 2010 by Eli Genauer | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
How a 17th-century Christian censor's discomfort with the eternity of the Torah found its way into standard editions of the Talmud.A Breakthrough Discovery
Friday, January 8, 2010 | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
The deciphering of the oldest Hebrew inscription ever discovered—from the tenth century B.C.E.—also supplies the earliest written evidence of the ancient Kingdom of Israel.Still Redundant After all these Years
Friday, January 8, 2010 by Gary Rosenblatt | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
Exactly six decades ago, a report on Jewish organizational life in the U.S. found "duplication, excessive competition, . . . and actual conflict." All still there today—but is this an altogether bad thing?One and the Same?
Friday, January 8, 2010 by Yael Mishali | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
Ultra-Orthodoxy and radical secularism are not so much polar opposites as two sides of the same coin; the good news is that both are doomed to extinction.In Poland, the Once Unthinkable Thrives
Friday, January 8, 2010 by Konstanty Gebert | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
A Jewish intellectual and former Solidarity activist marvels at a small but miraculously renewed community.
Art is a CameraFriday, January 8, 2010 | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Ever since the Second Commandment, with its prohibition of "images," Judaism has been an un-, or even anti-visual culture. Or so we are told. While there is some truth to this notion, it is a very limited truth. The realities—historical, philosophical, above all aesthetic—are much more complicated and much more interesting. After all, the Bible itself tells us that at Sinai the people "saw the voices." Scholars have demonstrated the rich visual culture at work in Jewish history, as well as the role of the visual imagination in theology and mysticism—and in the daily experience of those for whom Judaism is...
Friday, January 8, 2010 by H. Allen Orr | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
A new book tries to explain the history of Western religion by way of game theory and evolutionary psychology. The author makes important moral points; but the points are completely independent of the science, and even work against it.
It Isn’t Even PastThursday, January 7, 2010 | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
The recent theft and recovery of the sign Arbeit Macht Frei from the gate of Auschwitz, and the emotional responses elicited by the incident, drive home just how deeply embedded the Holocaust and its imagery remain in contemporary consciousness. No doubt, this world-historical event will long continue to occupy a central place in human memory—along with, unfortunately, whatever permutations, distortions, and outright falsifications time will add to those that have already accumulated in the overheated political rhetoric of our own age. That is why, here and now, as we enter perhaps the final decade of the event's living memory, the issue...
Thursday, January 7, 2010 by Paul Wolfowitz | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
Remembering a Muslim statesman and intellectual who combined faithfulness with deep humanity.For a Failing Kibbutz, Strange New Life
Thursday, January 7, 2010 by Ben Harris | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
A collective settlement in financial receivership finds a Conservative rabbi, and its dreams revive.
