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The Soul and the MachineThursday, August 12, 2010 by Yehudah Mirsky | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
The astounding growth of the Internet, computer technology, and artificial intelligence is a commonplace of our time; so is the challenge each poses to familiar ways of commerce and culture, and even to our basic understandings of humanity. Some of the farthest reaches of these developments are expressed in the "singularity" envisioned by the futurologist Raymond Kurzweil: a dazzling world in which, by the end of this century, humans will have so thoroughly merged with fog-like nano-computers that our bodies will no longer have a fixed form and we will, at long last, wield total control over—or be wholly at the mercy of?—an utterly...
Thursday, August 12, 2010 by Danny Cohen | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
The "Kirtan Rabbi," a/k/a Andrew Hahn, harnesses a Sanskrit call-and-response form of worship to promote what he insists is authentic Judaism. (With video)A Brutal Teacher
Wednesday, August 11, 2010 by Walter Reich | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
Those who wish for Middle East peace must reckon with the lessons that bitter experience has taught Israelis; here are ten of them.A Life in Letters
Wednesday, August 11, 2010 by Yuval Saar | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
Zvi Narkis, who has died at eighty-nine, was one of the most significant designers of modern Hebrew typefaces, placing his stamp on everything from cheese wrappers to currency to the Jerusalem Bible.Right of Return
Wednesday, August 11, 2010 | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
Although certified as Jewish by two rabbinical courts, a backsliding convert to Christianity has been denied Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return—but, in a novel and suggestive ruling, invited to try again.Crescent Rising
Wednesday, August 11, 2010 by Patricia Crone | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
A new book presents early Islam as tolerant, open, and ecumenical—an appealing picture, but false to the historical record.Shoftim: Judgment Call
Wednesday, August 11, 2010 by David Hazony | Jewish Ideas Daily » Weekly Portions
"Judges and officers shall you make for yourself in all your gates," we are told at the opening of this week's reading, "and they shall judge the people with righteous judgment." The declaration seems obvious at first blush. Who wouldn't want righteous judges? Yet the Bible—more so, perhaps, than any other text of the ancient world—is singularly attentive to this issue of judges, making it into one of the central demands of the Torah.
Rank RivalriesWednesday, August 11, 2010 by Elliot Jager | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
A bare majority of Americans know that General David Petraeus commands U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Fewer, surely, would be able to name Navy Admiral Mike Mullen as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In Israel, by contrast, the chief of the general staff of the country's defense forces is a household name—for he is the unique individual in public life who is single-mindedly focused on military security, the reassuring figure, above the political fray, to whom Israelis can look with confidence at times of threat to their national safety.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010 by Nat Hentoff | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
A wide-ranging compilation of Jewish soul music from the first half of the 20th century has been skillfully re-mastered and released in a 3-CD set. (With audio clips.)He Stayed Behind
Tuesday, August 10, 2010 by Ofer Aderet | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
Born in Nuremberg, Germany in 1923, escaping to Palestine in 1939, returning after the war to find his parents still alive, Arno Hamburger remained by their side until their deaths; at eighty-seven, he heads the city's Jewish community.
